Building on direct-to-patient marketing for improved access to therapeutics

In January 2024, the US-based global pharmaceutical company Lilly announced the launch of LillyDirect, a direct-to-patient portal that enables some patients to access drugs including its novel weight loss drug Zepbound for as little as $25 per month, achieved in partnership with Amazon Pharmacy. In this model, the LillyDirect telehealth platform can supplement or serve as an alternative to in-patient care, operating similarly to other telehealth pharmacy-type offerings like Roman or Nurx. The key difference between Lilly’s model and other telehealth and tele-pharmacy offerings is that it distributes only Lilly’s products, though it does leverage a third-party telehealth service to achieve the care delivery.

Usage of telehealth services exploded due to restrictions on in-person care during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing 63-fold for Medicare patients from 840,000 visits conducted using telehealth in 2019 to 52.7 million in 2020. While the growth of telehealth has slowed, its usage remains far above pre-pandemic levels, with an average of 22% of adults reporting use of telehealth in the last four weeks, in a survey conducted in 2023 by the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

The novel merger of a telehealth platform leveraged for prescription — where appropriate — of a specific therapy may raise red flags for some. It appears to excise local primary care providers who have greater familiarity with a patient’s longitudinal health record, as well as payers who can provide an important check on over-prescribing drugs with potentially harmful side effects. There is some concern that patients whose health does not warrant a prescription for a weight loss drug may lie to gain access to these drugs, a practice described in the New Yorker, among other publications, in 2023.

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