As the popularity of drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic used for weight loss continues to rise, another weight loss-focused company is jumping into the market.
As ABC News reports, Noom, an app that helps people track their eating and exercise habits, will now offer prescriptions through a new telehealth platform known as Noom Med.
The company said Noom Med will be available to people who meet certain requirements — such as a BMI of 30 or higher — and who are members of Noom Weight, its $42 per month program that offers psychological tips to help with weight loss.
The cost of Noom Med will be $49 per month and includes “interactive patient education, a psychologically-aware curriculum, and a suite of comprehensive nutrition & exercise tools,” according to the company.
Users who qualify can be prescribed weight loss medications after undergoing “comprehensive lab work” and a “health evaluation by a board-certified physician or a physician-supervised nurse,” according to Noom.
Noom’s entry into the medication market comes three months after WW, formerly known as Weight Watchers, made the same move. In March, WW announced it had acquired Sequence, a subscription-based telehealth platform that provides telemedicine appointments with doctors who can prescribe popular medications like Ozempic and Wegovy.
“These companies are profit-driven,” Maya Feller, a New York-based registered dietitian nutritionist, told Good Morning America. “And if people want to lose weight and they center that as the thing that’s valuable, we’re going to see more companies jump on the bandwagon and start to use these GLP-1s.”
Ozempic and Wegovy are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 RAs that help people produce insulin and lower the amount of sugar in the blood. The drugs slow down movement of food through the stomach, curbing appetite and leading to weight loss. Both drugs are made from a compound called semaglutide, which works by helping the pancreas release insulin to move sugar from the blood into body tissues.
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