Table 1. General characteristics of included reports of non-randomised studies (n=200).

Characteristics	No (%)
Research question
Population:
Patients with chronic disease	118 (59.0)
Healthy individuals with acute disease	55 (27.5)
Patients with acute disease and chronic conditions	27 (13.5)
Drug approval or regulation:
Drugs with long standing approval	181 (90.5)
Recently approved drugs	19 (9.5)
Interventions:
Start of treatment	88 (44.0)
Static strategy	43 (21.5)
Dynamic strategy	32 (16.0)
Length of treatment	11 (5.5)
Delay to start of treatment	7 (3.5)
Dose reduction	3 (1.5)
Stopped treatment	2 (1.0)
>1 intervention	12 (6.0)
Other	2 (1.0)
Comparators:
Usual care or no treatment	72 (36.0)
Other active treatment	78 (39.0)
Different treatment regimen	23 (11.5)
Combination	27 (13.5)
Outcomes:
Effectiveness and safety	99 (49.5)
Effectiveness	64 (32.0)
Safety	37 (18.5)
Study design and data
Study design:
Cohort*	189 (94.5)
Case-control	11 (5.5)
Data used (n=188):
Routinely collected data	126 (67.0)
Standardised data collection from an existing cohort	17 (9.1)
Standardised data collection for the purpose of the study	14 (7.4)
>1 type of data	11 (5.9)
Other	20 (10.6)
Sources of routinely collected data (n=137):
Electronic health records	49 (35.8)
Registry	32 (23.3)
Administrative data	30 (22.0)
>1 source	15 (10.9)
Not reported	11 (8.0)

^*Two reports were of target trial emulation studies, as reported by the authors.