Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly unveiled on Jan. 4 a new digital health care platform that would allow access to independent medical providers for patients living with obesity, migraines, and diabetes.
The website, dubbed LillyDirect, offers disease management resources, including access to tailored support and direct home delivery of select Lilly medicines through third-party pharmacy dispensing services.
“A complex U.S. healthcare system adds to the burdens patients face when managing a chronic disease,” Lilly CEO David Ricks said in a press release on Thursday.
“With LillyDirect, our goal is to relieve some of those burdens by simplifying the patient experience to help improve outcomes,” he added.
The new website, powered by third-party online pharmacy fulfillment services, facilitates home delivery for patients, ensuring they have “consistent access” to Lilly medicines they have been prescribed.
Patients may access Lilly’s affordability solutions by purchasing medicines directly from the drugmaker, and savings card opportunities are automatically applied for patients who qualify, it stated.
They will get access to independent telehealth providers and an independent search tool that allows patients to find health care professionals near them if they would rather receive in-person care.
“We know that people have come to depend on the efficiency and convenience of digital solutions to meet a variety of their everyday needs—healthcare being one of them,” said Frank Cunningham, group vice president of Global Value and Access at Lilly.
The service comes after extraordinary demand over the last year for powerful weight-loss drugs such as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy. Weight management service providers WW International and Ro have also launched telehealth services for obesity drugs.
Optimism over Lilly’s Zepbound, which is indicated for adults with obesity, drove a 59 percent surge in the company’s shares last year, making it the largest health care firm by market capitalization.
‘Cosmetic Weight Loss’
Lilly announced on Thursday that it stands against the use of its obesity and diabetes drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound for “cosmetic weight loss.”
“Mounjaro and Zepbound are indicated for the treatment of serious diseases; they are not approved for—and should not be used for—cosmetic weight loss,” it said in an open letter.
The company said it was “extremely concerned that some of the compounded tirzepatide that Lilly has tested has contained high amounts of impurities, and, in at least one instance, was actually nothing more than sugar alcohol.”
“Lilly has commenced legal action against certain medical spas, wellness centers, compounding pharmacies making and/or selling products claiming to contain the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for tirzepatide.
“Lilly also has commenced legal action against importers and distributors of these products, as well as against other counterfeit sources that are fraudulently claiming to sell Mounjaro, Zepbound, or tirzepatide medicines,” it stated.
The announcement came as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was investigating whether three potential health issues or side effects—such as suicidal ideation, hair loss, and aspiration—are linked to semaglutide and tirzepatide weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro.
The FDA’s Adverse Events Reporting System (FAERS) Public Dashboard shows that since 2018, the agency has received 16,854 reports of adverse events from patients taking Ozempic. Of these, 108 were reports of suicidal ideation, nine were suicide attempts, and six were suicides.
Mounjaro users reported 15 cases of suicidal ideations, and Wegovy users reported 14.
The FDA’s investigation is investigating 13 glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist medications in all, which, like Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy, have been linked to potential suicidal ideation.
In total, the FDA’s FAERS records show over 200 reports of suicide or suicidal ideation through September 2023 for semaglutides and tirzepatides.
Amie Dahnke and Reuters contributed to this report.