Direct-to-consumer virtual care company Hims & Hers is partnering with Novo Nordisk to allow Americans to access a bundled offering that includes the pharma giant's obesity drug Wegovy and a Hims & Hers membership starting at $599 per month. 

Hims & Hers members will have direct access to NovoCare Pharmacy, an offering through Novo Nordisk that allows cash-paying individuals without insurance to obtain the medication Wegovy and Hims' offerings, including 24/7 care, nutrition guidance and clinical support. 

Hims & Hers began offering Wegovy to cash-paying patients with a prescription this week.

The partners said they will also find a way to combine Novo Nordisk's technologies with Hims & Hers' ability to scale access to care.  

"We are pleased that Hims & Hers is making this offering available this week to people living with obesity," Dave Moore, executive vice president of U.S. operations and global business development and president of Novo Nordisk, said in a statement. 

"Beyond this initial collaboration, the companies are developing a roadmap that combines Novo Nordisk's innovative medications with Hims & Hers' ability to deliver access to quality care at scale, with the goal of improving long-term outcomes for more people living with chronic disease, and doing that more affordably."

Additionally, Novo Nordisk announced it is also partnering with direct-to-consumer virtual care company Ro and publicly traded telemedicine company LifeMD to sell its weight-loss drug through the telehealth providers to cash-paying clients at a reduced cost of $499 per month.  

THE LARGER TREND

Wegovy was first approved as a weight loss drug in 2021. 

In May of last year, Hims & Hers announced it would add GLP-1 injections to its weight-loss offerings, which included generic and 503B compounded injectable medications and oral medication kits for weight management, priced starting at $199 a month.

Hims & Hers offered a compounded semaglutide, which the company's website said was "a once-a-week prescription injection. Compounded GLP-1 injections available through Hims contain the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy." 

The FDA raised concerns over unapproved versions of GLP-1 drugs, such as compounded semaglutides, as an option for weight loss.

Until February of this year, compounders were allowed to produce hundreds of thousands of doses of Novo's brand-name medication due to a shortage of the medicine's active ingredient, semaglutide.

However, in February, the FDA announced that Novo Nordisk could fully meet or exceed nationwide demand for all doses of Wegovy and its diabetes drug Ozempic and, therefore, declared an end to the supply shortage. 

In turn, larger outsourcing facilities that create compounded drugs were given a deadline of May 22 to stop making the drug, and smaller compounding pharmacies were to stop immediately.

Hims & Hers received backlash in response to an ad played during Super Bowl LIX earlier this year, in which it presented itself as a solution to America's obesity problem. 

Two U.S. senators and the Partnership for Safe Medicines sent letters to the FDA, raising concerns that the ad failed to disclose safety and side effect information on compounded GLP-1 injections required in pharmaceutical advertising.

Last year, Hims & Hers announced plans to launch a generic version of Novo Nordisk's GLP-1 diabetes drug liraglutide on its platform in 2025. 

Liraglutide, whose brand name is Victoza, is used to treat type 2 diabetes and is part of the GLP-1 agonists category, which can help with weight loss by curbing one's appetite and controlling blood sugar.