Traditional medical practices are being driven by newcomers seeking to fill gaps in what health industry executives said Monday were a lagging health care system.
They include Hims & Hers, a direct-to-consumer health company, which announced Monday that it will launch a combination version of the weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic starting at $199 per month, which is 85% cheaper than the name-brand versions made by the company. Virtue. The two drugs belong to a group of so-called GLP-1 drugs, which are approved to treat diabetes but are popular for weight loss.
Hims & Hers chief medical officer Dr. Patrick Carroll said the move comes as the company focuses on personalization and customer choice in an effort to improve a traditionally “paternalistic” healthcare system. wealthhealthy brainstorming sessions.
In the past, doctors determined many aspects of a person’s health, which doesn’t mesh well with today’s patient expectations of freedom of choice in health care, Dr. Carroll said.
“The traditional medical model cannot solve this $4.5 trillion health care chaos,” he said.
Hims & Hers is adapting to the needs of the modern patient, publishing content about symptoms to educate people and help get them onboard the company’s platform. In this way, the company is trying to reach people who use Google or social media as their first resource for medical issues.
“This is a lot different than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, but that’s the model for the future,” Carroll said. “People are looking for answers online.”
While Carroll acknowledged that the $199 price tag for the company’s new product is still too high for some customers, he emphasized that Hims & Hers’ new GLP-1 weight-loss pill uses the same active ingredient as the name-brand drug, in part because of its partnership The partnership is with a general manufacturing company that he did not name.
Hims & Hers’ efforts to bring the weight-loss drug to market reflect growing demand for brand-name drugs, with other manufacturers such as Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly scrambling to expand production.
Although Wegovy and Ozempic are protected by patents, U.S. regulators allow pharmacies to produce compound versions of the drugs that are in short supply, but the FDA will not test the safety of these field-made versions of the drugs. In a January statement, the agency warned people not to use the combined form of the weight-loss drug when an FDA-approved version is available.
Despite this, compound diet pills are still favored by consumers due to the limited supply of brand-name weight loss pills.
