Koné, Anna Péfoyo
Scharf, Deborah
Article History
Received: 23 December 2020
Accepted: 24 March 2021
First Online: 14 April 2021
Declarations
:
: All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations, including data acquisition, cleaning, analyses and reporting of findings.
: This research has been approved by the Research Ethics Board (IRB) at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada, as required by Institute for Clinical and Evaluative Sciences’ (ICES’) Privacy and Legal Office for external researchers. The need for consent to participate was waived by this Institutional Review Board (IRB). ICES is a prescribed entity under section 45 of Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act. Section 45 authorizes ICES to collect personal health information, without consent, for the purpose of analysis or compiling statistical information with respect to the management of, evaluation or monitoring of, the allocation of resources to or planning for all or part of the health system. This project was conducted under section 45, and approved by ICES’ Privacy and Legal Office. All individual-level data were anonymized and only available to authorized researchers through a secure platform. REB approval from Lakehead University as well as ICES authorization are available upon request.
: The need for consent to participate was waived by Lakehead University's Research Ethics Board (REB) and is consistent with ICES’ rules. As a prescribed entity under PHIPA, ICES is authorized to collect personal health information from health organizations without consent for the purposes of evaluation and monitoring of Ontario’s health system. ICES is prohibited, under its agreements with data providers, from contacting individuals whose information has been entrusted to ICES. This contractual obligation restricts any opportunity to seek individuals’ consent for use of their information for research.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.