Castor EDC

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Pluspunten:

Erg makkelijk in gebruik en het vooraf kunnen inplannen van vragenlijst-uitnodigingen scheelt veel tijd.

Minpunten:

In het begin waren er wat moeilijkheden met invoeren van sommige email adressen en deze moest steeds opnieuw worden ingevoerd bij nieuwe vragenlijst. Dit is inmiddels opgelost. Het is soms wel lastig als je even wat wil aanpassen dat de hele studie naar niet-live gezet moet worden.

Great online program for study

Opmerkingen: Good online service. Very helpfull for my Study

Pluspunten:

Safe program, you can use it on every computer, at home and in the office. It was fine to use the trial version.

Minpunten:

Some little bugs, difficult Java scripts, Not possible to changes the output file

Overwogen alternatieven: Microsoft Excel

Redenen om over te stappen op Castor EDC: Safety, obligatory to use a data program, online possibility

Light touch system

Opmerkingen: Easy set up for a simple study, including simple sales experience
Our biggest headache has been with slowness of the system, though some of that is because hospital IT departments have a "go slow" on any non-critical website. We've solved the issue by providing alternative routes to connect to the internet. However, it is still occasionally reported as being slow to update a page when SDV / sign off being captured.

Pluspunten:

Not overly complicated design and user interface for non-drug trials Easy set up, especially of internal data checks Nested forms (records) Visual cleanliness Globally based servers

Minpunten:

Users report it being "clunky" and slow to update pages. This is more noticeable towards the end of the day (don't know if that is numbers of people using the system, or a reflection of having been working on it for several hours) It is not possible to filter on data within reports (as you can with records), nor run queries within the system (to find out how many patients have been diagnosed with a specific condition, captured in a report, I have to extract data for all patients, and clean it up in excel before I can run a simple count/filter function. The stats page doesn't allow scrolling, which means I often loose half the information User experience of using the system across different smart phones is variable

Overwogen alternatieven: Teamscope, SMART-TRIAL en OpenClinica

Redenen om over te stappen op Castor EDC: pricing not based on numbers of patients ability to capture images from within the system

Castor EDC is easy to use

Pluspunten:

Easy to build the eCRF forms as well as define the study roles and join users to the study. CRF forms can be replicated from one study to another in very easy way and faster.

Minpunten:

The data export functionality should be improved. XML and SAS datasets formats exports should be added

Very nice software, with future possibilities

Opmerkingen: When designing the study in castor, you learn a lot of functionalities that might come in handy for future designing. However, in the beginning, it can be hard to figure out where to start. Therefore, I would recommend everyone to take a look at the tutorial videos provided by Castor. They really helped me to understand the software better.

Pluspunten:

The software is easy to use, and allows for multiple people to work on the same project, whilst still being able to discriminate who worked on what fields. Additionally, after some practice, it is quite simple to build up an eCRF in castor, which can be used for live data storage.

Minpunten:

The fact that it is not able to import survey answers. We started using Castor when our study had already started. In order to store data from subjects that had already started our study, all survey answers had to be filled in manually. Also, at this moment, Castor does not warn you when you still have a report open for a subject, it still shows up as 100% complete when all regular fields are filled in. This would be nice to change.