Jacob, Louis http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1071-1239
Chevalier, Thomas
Kostev, Karel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2124-7227
Article History
Received: 5 September 2018
Accepted: 2 November 2018
First Online: 24 November 2018
Compliance with ethical standards
:
: Karel Kostev is an employee of IQVIA. IQVIA (ExternalRef removed) is a commercial research institute providing information, services and technology for the healthcare industry. The other authors declare that they have no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
: German law allows the use of anonymous electronic medical records for research purposes under certain conditions. According to this legislation, it is not necessary to obtain informed consent from patients or approval from a medical ethics committee for this type of observational study that contains no directly identifiable data. Because patients were only queried as aggregates and no protected health information was available for queries, no IRB approval was required for the use of this database or the completion of this study.