Telehealth Firm Hims & Hers Launches Weight-loss Drug Shortage Tracker

(Reuters) -Hims & Hers Health on Wednesday launched a tracker for popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs that allows patients to share details about their challenges finding treatments such as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy.

The telehealth firm said it would share the information with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about shortages of the brand-name treatments, it said.

The FDA declined to comment.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

Americans are still eagerly seeking prescriptions for Eli Lilly and Novo’s weight-loss and diabetes drugs but cannot always fill them because of supply issues and insurance hurdles, according to their doctors.

Branded GLP-1 drugs from Novo and Lilly have been short in supply for most of this year, fuelling demand for compounded weight-loss treatments created by combining, mixing, or altering drug ingredients.

Once back in supply, compounders and online pharmacies such as Hims & Hers are supposed to stop producing compounded versions of these drugs.

CONTEXT

The FDA took Lilly’s Zepbound off its shortage list in early October. But a compounding industry group sued the agency, prompting it to revisit its decision and allow compounding pharmacies and facilities to keep providing the drugs in the meantime.

All doses of Novo’s Wegovy are also listed as available, though the drug is yet to come off the agency’s shortage list.

Wall Street analysts have struggled to estimate the size of the market but some have said compounded drugs could be reaching a larger number of patients than captured in official data.

The FDA has a public portal where patients or caregivers can report new drug shortages. It also tracks existing or known drug shortages on its website.

(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Alan Barona)