Another digital healthcare company is selling off-brand weight loss drugs — for pretty cheap

Noom’s new GLP-1 Rx program will combine compounded semaglutide — an off-brand version of the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) popular Ozempic and Wegovy treatments — with a companion program aimed to help customers achieve sustainable weight loss even when they get off the drug.

The new offering is $149 for the first month and then $279 a month for the subsequent months. That’s hundreds of dollars cheaper than Wegovy’s $1,349 monthly price tag.

Noom joins other digital health care companies including Hims & Hers, Ro, and Sesame in offering cheaper alternatives to branded weight loss drugs.

But Noom’s program distinguishes itself with a behavior-focused platform designed to help users prevent muscle loss — a potential side effect of the medications. It also offers a taper-off guarantee, ensuring customers can maintain their weight loss even as they gradually reduce their reliance on the drugs.

“We view it as the medication being quite helpful in obviously kick starting a weight loss journey,” Noom CEO Geoff Cook said in an interview. “And then if you pair that with the psychology that’s needed to maintain that weight loss, you get a powerful result and you can even taper off the medication successfully.”

Cook said that Noom, which had already been offering branded weight loss medications, decided to include a cheaper alternative after noticing that customers were facing challenges accessing the drugs due to high costs, lack of insurance coverage, and ongoing shortages in the U.S.

Noom and other telehealth companies are able to offer cheaper alternatives through a process known as compounding.

Compounding refers to the customization of an approved drug by a pharmacy or physician to meet the specific needs of an individual patient.

Typically, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act prohibits compounding drugs that are just copies of commercially available medications. But drugs that are in shortage are not considered by the FDA to be commercially available. The limited supply of highly coveted and expensive brand name drugs like Wegovy has spurred several digital health care companies to take advantage of that provision.

However, there are risks. The Food and Drug Administration said in July that it had received reports of overdoses related to weight loss drugs, often due to confusion over proper dosing.

Cook said that Noom customers enrolled in the new program will receive a vial containing a month’s supply, along with clear dosing and administration instructions provided both on the packaging and within the app. He also urged regulators to exercise caution when considering the end of a shortage declaration for brand-name weight loss drugs, saying that doing so prematurely could limit customers’ access to more affordable alternatives.

“We hope that the regulators and policymakers are cautious when realizing that the end of that shortage may lead to millions of people no longer able to access their obesity medication,” Cook said.

Cook noted that Noom’s pricing for compounded semaglutide is closer to the price of the drug in other countries — $137 in Germany and $92 in the United Kingdom.