Lilly links up with JD Health
Lilly links up with JD Health for DTC obesity, diabetes drug sales in China
Amid a growing push for more direct-to-consumer access to some of the world’s most popular drugs, Eli Lilly has inked a deal with China’s JD Health to sell its obesity, Type 2 diabetes and alopecia areata meds in the country through a digital health platform. The platform will aim to serve as a “one-stop” shop for chronic disease management, according to Lilly’s announcement on its WeChat channel Friday.
In addition to connecting patients with both on- and offline consultations with healthcare providers, as well as any resulting prescriptions for and shipments of Lilly’s drugs, the platform will also offer follow-up services for long-term care management and disease education resources.
The latter offering will target both patients and healthcare professionals: One section on the digital health app will provide educational information to increase patients’ understanding of their diagnoses and care options, while another set of tools is aimed at improving HCPs’ “professional disease management capabilities.”
The team-up comes as the Chinese government has encouraged greater access to health education and long-term management tools to help prevent and treat chronic diseases, per the announcement.
It's estimated there are around 148 million adults in China who have diabetes and more than 500 million who are overweight or obese, marking major opportunities for Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound, respectively.
The partners added that they plan to continue to grow their collaboration to offer Chinese patients DTC access to treatments and care services across more disease areas.
Mounjaro and Zepbound racked up Chinese approvals, and Lilly announced in October that it would pour $200 million into an expansion of its manufacturing site in Suzhou, largely to meet skyrocketing demand for the two drugs.
Most recently, Lilly’s mazdutide scored a first-in-class approval in China for chronic weight management, breaking ground on a new class of competitors within the blockbuster GLP-1 space, though local biopharma Innovent Biologics holds the rights to the dual GLP-1/glucagon receptor agonist in the country.
