Eli Lilly’s dispensing and delivery service LillyDirect comes to UK

[WeAllHaveWings]

https://www.chemistanddruggist.co.uk/news/business/eli-lillys-dispensing-and-delivery-service-lillydirect-comes-to-uk-BT443QVESZEUPNS6FMZT5XZERA/

Eli Lilly has launched its dispensing and delivery service LillyDirect in the UK, the drugmaker announced today.
It said LillyDirect is currently available for private prescriptions of its blockbuster weight loss medicine Mounjaro, and the company “will continue to evaluate” which other drugs are offered through the service.
Online pharmacies Pharmacy2U and Onescript will support LillyDirect as dispensing partners, it added.
Lilly said the healthcare professionals at the private companies it provides the service to will retain “discretion and ultimate responsibility for all prescribing decisions and for the patient-clinician relationship”.
“Lilly plays no role in any clinical decisions relating to patient care,” it noted.
And it added that LillyDirect aims to “ensure that authentic, Lilly-manufactured medicines are delivered to patients” and help “safeguard against the risk of counterfeit products entering the supply chain”.

Not sure how I feel about big pharma having my data and dispensing history.

Will they use it to prevent patients jumping between pharmacies and stock building during shortages. Will they prioritise pharmacies using this service during shortages? Wonder how many pharmacies will go down this route.

Centralised distribution direct to customers should bring about significant cost savings but I also doubt us customers will see any of them.

Very clever of Eli Lilly.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/lilly-launches-its-lillydirect-sales-channel-uk

A bit more info here -

Rather, the UK version of LillyDirect operates as a post-prescription dispensing and delivery service that will operate in the UK through a network of private UK-regulated healthcare organisations.
Once an eligible private healthcare company has registered for LillyDirect, it will be able to issue private electronic prescriptions to patients, which will be processed and delivered by Lilly's dispensing partners, currently Blueco Healthcare's Onescript service and Pharmacy2U.

So essentially just fulfilment/ warehouse drop shipping - the end user will still go to a pharmacy or similar but Eli Lilly registered partners can fulfil , removing the need for pharmacies to operate their own warehousing/ shipping….

unlikely to have any impact on end user pricing I would think……

I hope it is as simple as that @putthehamsterbackinitscage , but I suspect it won't be.

Our UK pharmacies will have heavily invested in building, storage facilities, staff for these medications.

If this is the preferred model by Lilly will pharmacies other than their preferred ones struggle to remain competitive, or even perhaps viable, giving us less choice?

Could they remove the rebate scheme from pharmacies?

Lilly Direct in US is a different model, but reportedly with their direct to customers model if customers don't reorder regularly they get moved back to list price. Will they be able to do the same here.

What will they be doing with our data and dispensing history - will this further restrict pharmacy discretion

Could it impact customers stopping and restarting treatment without cost implications

Will it remove/reduce price competition, pharmacies may not be able to have have "loss leader" pricing for some doses

I worry this is less about simplicity and cost saving and more about big pharma control, squeezing out every £ of profit they can, and american models for (expensive) health care.

Interesting. My first thought is that they are gearing up for the release of their pill, in some way, perhaps by making sure there is adequate infrastructure for the UK / EU launch.

In the US, there were lots of HCPs who started people on oral sema for weight loss and Lilly's pill didn't do too well as launch.

(To be honest if I was a Novo pharma rep, I would have suggested to every HCP to build a list of people who would benefit from a table so that the pool of potential patients were all on before release of Lily's pill).

any thoughts?

Gosh you’re working hard to find a negative. It’s just a warehousing and distribution service that opens up the playing field for more pharmacies, a lot of them won’t be able to afford to create infrastructure and of course of those who did much will be rented, they also can ensure the conditions of the meds.

thwre is nothing to suggest they will prioritise their own delivery system, it doesn’t even make sense for them to do so.

Hope it works out that way @Wickedlittledancer but I will remain sceptical until we see how it impacts pharmacies, and price competition, it in practice.

Lotus has sent a message to their customers to say they have been selected as a partner

Do the suppliers like Lotus get some sort of cheaper deal via this process, or a guarantee of first dibs on stock or something? Because I can’t see that it would make any difference at all to me as a customer. Everything in the paragraph about benefits for customers - genuine product, cold chain, tracked delivery, discreet & secure packaging is already something that any decent pharmacy does.

Lotus were always a CQC registered weight loss clinic/service, their dispensing was done by pharmalogical originally I think, and now being done by Eli Lilly partner pharmacy OneScript. It looks like Eli Lilly will be partnering with CQC registered clinics and pharmacies.

All sounds great on what has been shared, genuine product, cold chain etc..........

Hopefully it does work out that way and non CQC registered pharmacies don't struggle to compete and price competition doesn't suffer. Only time will tell.

Oushk mentioned in their live this week they have started the process to become CQC registered when someone asked about off label prescribing saying it would allow them more flexibility if they brought a Dr on board. I wonder if it is related to this too.

I think it will open competition and reduce pricing. As the pharmacies will have lower costs and more of them will be able to supply at scale. The big ones will no longer have a strangle hold on the market as they could afford the facilities to do it. Which means the onky differentiator will be price.

For anyone still interested in this and how the pricing for Lillydirect seems to work, I saw this on Reddit

Lillydirect list prices are less than the list price increase we saw in September (second picture), but we never saw how much the pharmacies could claim back on the rebate scheme.

I believe only CQC registered clinics can join Lillydirect so they will have higher overheads. For Lotus it doesn’t look like Lillydirect makes a significant difference to their retail price when compared to others on the pharmacy model.

I guess in theory you should get access to more services/support from a CQC registered clinic for the price, but it is not something I have felt I have needed in the last 2 years.