Vitamin D blood testing in Pharmacies in Austria - started in 2024
Claude AI investigation
One clarification on the source first. The paper you cited reports a pilot launched by the pharmacy board (Apothekerkammer) of Salzburg in April 2024 — a state-level ("federal," i.e. Bundesland) screening campaign rather than a rural-pharmacy-specific program, though Salzburg's version does explicitly cover both urban and rural pharmacies. The authors concluded that a large-scale pharmacy screening campaign was feasible, produced high satisfaction among patients and pharmacists, found significantly low vitamin D levels, and that pharmacists wanted clinical pharmacy services expanded.
What's happened since:
Salzburg itself appears to have made it an ongoing service. The Apothekerkammer's "Ich check's jetzt! Mein Vitamin-D Wert" page describes it in the present tense — anyone can have their vitamin D status measured in selected pharmacies in both the city and the countryside ("Stadt und Land"), which is the rural reach you're asking about.
Other states picked up the model:
Styria (Steiermark) ran a notably large rollout. More than 60 pharmacies in nearly all Styrian districts offered low-threshold testing through December 31, with a fingerstick blood drop giving a result in 15 minutes, and it was publicly backed by the regional health councilor (Landesrat Kornhäusl).
Upper Austria (Oberösterreich) folded vitamin D testing into its "Aktionstag Gesundheit 2025," with vitamin D checks among the on-site tests and the organizers explicitly looking ahead to 2026.
Vienna/Lower Austria/Burgenland: the Goldenes Kreuz health network (with Sandoz) ran a free vitamin D screening week across 33 partner pharmacies from January 20–25, 2025 — the second time it had run the action, and again well received.
So the trajectory is clearly "continued and expanding" rather than a one-off pilot. A couple of caveats worth flagging for any wiki write-up: these are mostly point-of-care fingerstick screenings (awareness/triage, not diagnostic — Salzburg's own materials stress pharmacists don't make diagnoses), and most reports are press releases or the chamber's own pages, not peer-reviewed follow-up data. I haven't found a published 2025/26 outcomes paper equivalent to the Rose et al. report yet.