Document is current

Article History

Received: 22 September 2017

Accepted: 22 January 2018

First Online: 6 February 2018

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Ethics approval for CiPCA was given by the North Staffordshire, Staffordshire, and Black Country Local Research Ethics Committees (REC reference: 03/04). Ethics approval constitutes the use of this anonymised dataset for research and hence individual patient consent is not required. Patients are informed by leaflet that the practice is a research practice and that their anonymised records (with identifiable information removed) may be used for research and that they can opt out if they wish by informing the practice staff. Patients who have asked for their or their children’s medical records not to be used for research have a code applied to their records, Type 1 opt out, at their general practice which means their data is excluded during the extraction process. CiPCA operates a research request procedure where all requests are reviewed by the CiPCA Academic Custodianship Committee (ExternalRef removed).

: Not applicable

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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