To assess the impact of the non-reimbursement policy on vitamin D therapy discontinuation in patients from the general and rheumatic populations.

A cross-sectional study.

Research institute specialised in health research and two outpatient pharmacies in the Netherlands.

Patients from the general and rheumatic population with an active prescription for vitamin D supplementation therapy were included.

Data were collected between April and May 2023 through self-reported questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were performed using STATA V. 17. P value

The primary outcome was the proportion of patients who discontinued vitamin D supplementation therapy following the implementation of the non-reimbursement policy. Secondary outcomes included patient-reported reasons for therapy discontinuation and the association between patient-related characteristics and the risk of therapy discontinuation. In addition, the proportion of patients who switched to an alternative supplement and whether this switch had been made in consultation with a healthcare provider was examined.

Of the 4800 patients, 302 (6.4%) patients discontinued their vitamin D therapy. The three most frequently reported reasons for therapy discontinuation were the inability to afford supplements without reimbursement, not willing to pay for supplements without reimbursement and being unaware of the alternative vitamin D supplements to switch to. Younger age, financial constraints and limited health literacy were significantly associated with vitamin D therapy discontinuation (p

The implementation of the non-reimbursement policy resulted in a small proportion of patients discontinuing their vitamin D therapy. Elevated discontinuation rates were associated with specific patient-related characteristics including patients aged

Advancements in technology for treating diabetes mellitus (DM) are progressing rapidly. With the growing availability and use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems and continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII), glucose regulation is improved in individuals with DM, which will lead to less long-term complications and reduce the overall disease burden on patients with DM. Collecting vast amount of biomedical data, these devices combined with clinical outcome data provide more insight into the development and treatment of the disease. The objective of the DIABASE initiative is to collect and examine real-world data from medical devices and clinical practice in a registry.

The ongoing study is structured as an observational study registry. Clinical data and real-world data from diabetes wearable devices, such as CGM and CSII, are aggregated in the database. Clinical data is automatically extracted from the hospital’s electronic health record. Data from wearables is periodically collected manually from the various online data platforms for sharing and automatically added to the database.

This study is exempted from ethics approval by the Medical Research Ethics Committees United (MEC-U) since participants are not subject to procedures and are not required to follow rules of behaviour (approval ID: AW23.009/W20.197). The execution of this study has been approved by the board of the study site Hospital Group Twente (ZGT) (ZGT20-40). Results will be shared through scientific meetings and publications and through articles for the general public.

NCT05584293; Pre-results.