Novo Nordisk continues to expand its partnerships with telehealth companies to broaden access to its blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy.
The pharma giant is now partnering with WeightWatchers to offer consumers access to Wegovy, using CenterWell Pharmacy to fulfill and deliver the medications. CenterWell is owned by Humana.
WeightWatchers aims to provide patients with a more streamlined experience, along with convenient access to FDA-approved medication with the lifestyle support shown to improve outcomes, the company said in a press release.
The partnership will start July 1.
The new tie-up with WeightWatchers comes as Novo Nordisk recently terminated its partnership with online health and wellness company Hims & Hers over concerns about the company selling and promoting knockoff compounded GLP-1 drugs.
Dave Moore, executive vice president, U.S. operations of Novo Nordisk, said the company has been "encouraged" with its existing collaborations with telehealth companies Ro and LifeMD.
"WeightWatchers has spent over six decades building a science-backed approach to weight management and we see strong synergy in our shared commitment to improving long-term health outcomes. We will continue to pursue and build on agreements with companies that share our values and refine initiatives that help improve access to our FDA-approved medicines for patients," Moore said in a statement.
Novo Nordisk is introducing a new cash-offer price of $299 available through July 31, 2025, and available for self-paying patients who are new to the Wegovy savings offer or those who have not previously filled a prescription through NovoCare, the company's online pharmacy.
This builds on the company's previous $199 Wegovy cash-offer patient price that expires June 30. Patients who redeemed the $199 Wegovy savings offer between May 22 and June 30 are eligible for the $299 price on one fill between July 1 and July 31. For subsequent months, self-paying patients will pay $499 per month, the company said.
Patients can access this offer at Wegovy.com, Novo Pharmacy or through WeightWatchers, Ro and LifeMD. These telehealth providers are integrated with NovoCare.
When the drugmaker announced a partnership with Hims & Hers in April, it appeared the two companies struck a truce after they sparred over the telehealth company's practice of selling compounded versions of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo’s Wegovy and Ozempic drugs.
Hims & Hers and other telehealth companies took a hit when the Food and Drug Administration announced that semaglutide was no longer in short supply, making it ineligible for compounding. Manufacturers of compounded semaglutide and some telehealth players had built up a market selling cheaper alternatives to branded weight loss drugs.
In just 18 months, weight loss has become one of Hims & Hers' largest specialties, CEO Andrew Dudum told investors during its first-quarter earnings call in May. Earlier this year, the company began selling a generic version of Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug liraglutide. The company also continued to sell personalized doses of semaglutide "for the subset of consumers for whom it is a clinical necessity," Dudum said.
Last week, Novo abruptly ended the partnership with Hims & Hers after only one month, claiming the company was breaking the law by continuing to sell compounded semaglutide along with Novo's branded drugs.
Novo Nordisk cited patient safety concerns over "foreign illicit active pharmaceutical ingredients" in knock-off versions of GLP-1 drugs.
The drugmaker said, based on its investigation, the "semaglutide" active pharmaceutical ingredients that are in the knockoff drugs sold by telehealth entities and compounding pharmacies are manufactured by foreign suppliers in China.
Hims & Hers hit back, asserting that the drugmaker was "misleading the public" and insisted that the company wants to offer patients a range of options for weight loss medications.
"In recent weeks, Novo Nordisk’s commercial team increasingly pressured us to control clinical standards and steer patients to Wegovy regardless of whether it was clinically best for patients. We refuse to be strong-armed by any pharmaceutical company’s anticompetitive demands that infringe on the independent decision making of providers and limit patient choice," Dudum said in a statement.
Feeling pressure from the growth of new weight loss drugs like GLP-1s, WeightWatchers, a 62-year-old company, filed for bankruptcy in May. The company has struggled with about $1.5 billion in debt. The company said its bankruptcy plan would "bolster its financial position, increase investment flexibility in its strategic growth initiatives, and better serve its millions of members around the world.”