Castor, a developer of technologies to support decentralized clinical trials, has added an end-to-end patient onboarding platform to its portfolio.

The company offers digital tools to researchers that include its electronic data capturing system, participant informed consent software, virtual participant surveys and an API for integrations.

Its new onboarding platform builds on the Castor eConsent tool and leads participants through the recruitment, screening, consent and enrollment processes.

Specifically, the platform recruits participants via a customizable study web portal. It pre-screens all potential enrollees to ensure they meet the study criteria and gathers their consent for digital or in-person participation. Additionally, the platform can randomize patients and begin to collect study data through the Castor Clinical Data Management Platform.

WHY IT MATTERS

Castor built its new platform to make the clinical trial enrollment process a more person-centered experience. It says it focused on making the system more transparent and efficient in the hopes that participants will better understand what’s expected of them, engage with the study more and remain active throughout the trial.

Building clinical trials with a patient-centered design is important as dropout rates have been known to reach more than 30% at times, according to Pharmacy and Therapeutics.

To minimize the rates that people discontinue their participation, experts suggest that clinical trials be built with minimal visits and examinations, collect only necessary data and make case reports easy to understand.

“Castor’s cloud-based platform improves the early study experience of investigators and patients by decentralizing clinical trials,” Dr. Derk Arts, CEO and founder of Castor, said in a statement.

“We have seen by simplifying participant enrollment, our study sponsors are seeing improved retention in trials and reduced recruitment timelines. We are at the forefront of digital health transformation, and our scalable clinical trial solutions can accelerate drug development and improve patient engagement.”

THE LARGER TREND

The COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for accelerated digital transformation in much of healthcare, and the research world was no exception. Today, there is quite a bit of competition in the space.

Earlier this month, Castor scored $45 million in its Series B funding round, which it plans to use to make improvements to its platform.

There’s also Unlearn, which creates digital twins to be used in the control arm of clinical trials. The company raised $15 million in its Series A round of funding last year.

Last October, Labcorp announced a new tech platform to help streamline the clinical trial and drug development process.

This summer, Hawthorne Effect scored $20 million in Series A funding to grow its platform that helps capture clinical trial data points beyond a single clinical setting.

Earlier this year, decentralized clinical trial operating system developer Science37 went public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) LifeSci Acquisition II Corp.

To help future adoption of remote clinical trials, the Decentralized Trials and Research Alliance (DTRA) launched last year to unite stakeholders across the health spectrum to further policies, research practices and technology innovation for decentralized clinical trials.