UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project

The support from this project came from numerous groups. There was widespread support in the oncology professional communities including the Royal College of Radiologists[7], Association of Cancer Physicians[8] and Action Radiotherapy[9], with the Royal College of Radiologists noting that the project was an example of “best practice to benefit oncology patients”. Early academic institutional supporters were the University of Birmingham, University of Oxford and University of Leeds, and patient support groups include Macmillan Cancer Support.[10][11]

The project was launched in just 100 hours as a result of the pressing urgency of the clinical situation. The initial phases of funding were largely achieved through the donation of time and resources from the supporters and advocates of this project. The University of Birmingham played sizeable role in this process, with the Pro-Vice Chancellor dedicating the computational and human resources of the University's Centre for Computational Biology, the Institute of Translational Medicine and scientists from the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences.

All UK Cancer care centres were invited to participate in UKCCMP. Coronavirus Cancer Reporting was lead by a Local Emergency Response Reporting Group at cancer centre who typically included doctors, nurses and other medical health professionals.[12] Communication channels were rapidly established between UK cancer centres with local reporting of all COVID-19 presentations.

The project aimed to provide regular data releases to clinicians to provide insight of high clinical utility to inform and facilitate key decision makers[2] To this end, the project has encouraged a more collaborative approach to patient and clinical management across UK Cancer Centres and hopes to pioneer a number of changes in the practice of oncology within the United Kingdom and internationally.

The UK Coronavirus cancer monitoring project is a clinician-led reporting project which depends on the time and skills of the oncology community in the United Kingdom. The project was conceived on 18 March 2020 and launched on 26 March 2020 with support from the University of Birmingham and several oncology organisations within the United Kingdom.[3][11] The project team is chaired by Professor Gary Middleton, Professor Rachel Kerr and Dr Lennard Lee, and is composed of academic and clinical teams led by the scientific board for data acquisition, analysis and dissemination.[13]