Eli Lilly on Thursday announced the rollout of a new digital healthcare platform to streamline consumer access to its weight-loss drug Zepbound and other medications.
Pictured: Eli Lilly world headquarters/iStock, jetcityimage
Eli Lilly is looking to bolster the commercial availability of its weight-loss drug Zepbound (tirzepatide) with the launch of a direct-to-consumer website and services to streamline access, the pharma giant announced Thursday.
The new digital healthcare site called LillyDirect is designed for patients with obesity, migraines and diabetes. According to the company, the site will offer “disease management resources” giving consumers access to healthcare providers and providing home delivery of Lilly’s medicines through third-party pharmacy dispensing services.
“A complex U.S. healthcare system adds to the burdens patients face when managing a chronic disease. With LillyDirect, our goal is to relieve some of those burdens by simplifying the patient experience to help improve outcomes,” Lilly CEO David Ricks said in a statement.
By obtaining the medicines—including Zepbound—from the company directly, patients can access “affordability solutions” in the form of saving cards that are automatically applied for patients who qualify, Lilly contends. Medicines that pharmacy service providers fulfill will also ship for free, according to Thursday’s announcement.
Other medicines available on the site include Rezvoglar, Humulin, Humalog, Emgality, and Basaglar. LillyDirect will also provide patients with access to telehealth providers and allow for search tools to find healthcare professionals near patients if in-person care is preferred.
“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,” Frank Cunningham, Lilly’s group vice president of global value and access, said in a statement. “We launched LillyDirect with the hope that it will offer patients an innovative end-to-end experience to manage their health and access their medicines so they can get back to living their lives.”
Lilly will update the site and include new products, partners, and services in the future.
On Thursday, Lilly also released an open letter warning against the use of its GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound for “cosmetic weight loss.”
Lilly’s Zepbound injection was approved in November 2023 by the FDA and is meant for adults to manage chronic weight management issues including obesity with at least one weight-related condition such as high cholesterol or hypertension.
In December 2023, a study published in the scientific journal JAMA found that patients taking the drug had regained weight after halting treatment.
Tyler Patchen is a staff writer at BioSpace. You can reach him at tyler.patchen@biospace.com. Follow him on LinkedIn.
