Learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for real-world evidence research in oncology-shared perspectives from international consortia.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a dramatic disruption in clinical practice and undermined the timely delivery of optimal care for patients with cancer worldwide. In order to address many of these challenges and to provide insights into how cancer treatment could be safely delivered to a clinically vulnerable group during the pandemic, several research groups created registries from real world evidence (RWE). These aimed to understand features and factors associated with COVID-19 overall mortality and severity in patients with cancer, optimal management and the impact of the infection in terms of cancer care delivery 1-7.