About the Authors

Xibiao Ye

xibiao.ye@gmail.com

Affiliations Department of Community Health Sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Mahmoud Torabi

Affiliation Department of Community Health Sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Lisa M. Lix

Affiliations Department of Community Health Sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Salaheddin M. Mahmud

Affiliations Department of Community Health Sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Competing Interests

SMM has received unrestricted research grants from GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur and Pfizer for unrelated studies. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter our adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: XY. Data curation: XY. Formal analysis: XY MT. Funding acquisition: XY. Investigation: XY LML SMM MT. Methodology: XY SMM MT. Project administration: XY. Resources: XY. Software: XY. Supervision: XY. Validation: XY. Visualization: XY. Writing – original draft: XY. Writing – review & editing: SMM LML MT.