Are community pharmacies at risk from becoming too dependent on private weight management services as an income lifeline? Saša Janković reports
A recent report from Deloitte shows that while obesity drugs have displaced oncology drugs as the largest contributor to a pharma company’s pipeline value, the industry might be wise not to rely on these medicines as a long-term
The latest Measuring the Return from Pharmaceutical Innovation annual report which analyses the late-stage drug development pipelines of the top 20 global biopharma companies, reveals obesity drugs now account for 25% of total forecast sales – up from just 1% in 2022 – but when GLP-1 drugs are excluded from the analysis, R&D productivity is weaker, with a rate of return of just 2.9%
Colin Terry, Life Sciences partner at Deloitte, says that while the headline figures suggest ‘a robust recovery in R&D productivity’, the analysis uncovered ‘an industry wide critical dependency on GLP-1 drugs that could create a ‘bubble’ effect’, and that ‘this concentration of value into a few mega-blockbuster drugs, while exciting, exposes the industry to risk once launched.’
Pharmacy reliance
The community pharmacy sector has become increasingly involved in offering private weight management services using GLP-1 medications, against a backdrop of significant financial pressure. Yet despite the next generation of GLP-1 tablets already available alongside the established weight loss injectables that patients have become familiar with, could GLP-1 supply in community pharmacy also be a bubble about to burst?
Judit Mora, CEO and co-founder of the Nuumad pharmacy consultation platform is not yet concerned. ‘Most of the sector feel that NHS funding alone is no longer sufficient to sustain contractors’, she says. ‘As a result, many of the pharmacies that are performing well financially are doing so because they offer one or two high demand private services – most commonly weight management and travel health – and I don’t believe demand is likely to disappear anytime soon.’
However, Sarah Passmore, superintendent pharmacist at Pharmacy+Health, says that ‘although popularity for weight loss services has increased massively due to GLP-1 medication’, she doesn’t believe pharmacies are relying solely on GLP-1 service income because ‘the margins are tight.’
The ‘real pressure on margins’, according to Phuong Nguyen – independent prescriber and superintendent pharmacist at Bolt Pharmacy in Blackburn, Lancashire – ‘isn’t manufacturers going direct to patients; that’s more of a US story, and UK advertising law doesn’t allow a manufacturer to promote a prescription medicine straight to the public here the way it can in the US. What’s actually squeezing margins is competition between providers chasing the same patients, combined with the cost of staying compliant.’
Reshaping profitability
What may change, Ms Mora believes, is the service model itself. ‘As processes become more streamlined and technology enabled, pharmacies may be able to deliver these services with less pharmacist time’, she says, ‘and that could reshape profitability and competition within the market. Pharmacies that remain agile, embrace new ways of working and adapt their service models will be best placed to maintain strong returns.’
Ms Passmore says she is not seeing any tailing off across Pharmacy+Health pharmacies: ‘Quite the opposite in fact. The issue of obesity isn’t going away, and the reality is many people using GLP-1 medication may continue to use it in one form or another throughout their lifetime.’
Despite these predictions of continuing popularity, Ms Nguyen warns that pharmacists should still bear in mind the ‘compliance cost’, which she describes as ‘the real legislative pressure’ pharmacies are working under
‘Since February 2025, the GPhC has classified weight-management medicines as ‘high-risk’, meaning prescribers can no longer rely on an online questionnaire alone; they must independently verify information like weight and medical history and maintain genuine two-way communication with the patient’ explains Ms Nguyen. ‘Pharmacy owners and superintendent pharmacists are now jointly accountable for getting this right, and the GPhC has signalled an even tougher enforcement stance this year, so the floor on what a ‘private’ service has to include keeps rising, even as competition squeezes what patients are willing to pay. That combination, not a price cap, is what will determine who survives.’
Service longevity
While it appears that GLP-1 provision in community pharmacy will remain a dependable income stream – at least in the medium term – sector experts’ advice to those currently making a good return on offering a GLP-1 service is not to sit on their laurels
Graham Thoms, chief executive officer at the Pharmadoctor digital healthcare platform, believes the UK market for GLP-1s ‘will continue to grow’, and that ‘as more competitor products come onto the UK market, including low-cost generics, it should mean that GLP-1s are increasingly more affordable to patients over time’. As a result, his advice for pharmacies not already offering this service is to ‘get involved’
Ms Nguyen adds that pivoting to offer the new oral options should be happening now. ‘The Wegovy oral semaglutide tablet was approved by the MHRA on 11 June and is the first daily oral GLP-1 licensed for weight management in the UK, and Lilly’s rival pill, orforglipron, is still waiting on its UK decision, expected later this year’, she says. ‘My advice for pharmacies still on the sidelines isn’t to wait and see which pill wins, but to have the operational and clinical readiness – supply relationships, prescribing protocols, staff training – in place now, because the gap between approval and being able to safely dispense closes faster than people expect.’
Patient education
Ms Mora says for many pharmacies, weight loss services have been ‘the gateway into private healthcare provision’, which she says makes the next step ‘using that success as a foundation for building a broader portfolio of services rather than relying too heavily on a single offering’
She advises pharmacy owners think strategically about the patients they already serve: ‘Are they frequent travellers? Are they interested in preventative healthcare, wellness or aesthetic treatments? What other health concerns might they be seeking support with?’
Indeed, patient support and education has long been at the heart of Graham Phillips’ philosophy, as director and superintendent pharmacist of iHeart Pharmacy Group, and founder of the ProLongevity health management program which aims to help patients prevent and tackle metabolic syndrome
He says instead of relying on selling weight loss drugs they should be used as a tool: ‘We start patients on 1.25 milligrams of tirzepatide – half the usual dose – coupled with advice on lifestyle change. Yes, GLP-1s might be the answer for the 10% of people who take it for five years and modify their diet but there’s no long-term data beyond 10 years, and while they’re talking about people taking this for a lifetime, the evidence is overwhelmingly that they won’t.’
Ms Passmore agrees that the popularity of weight management services provides a ‘huge opportunity’ for pharmacy to familiarise the public about the clinical expertise people can access conveniently on their high street. ‘That’s where the long-term value to pharmacies really lies’, she says, ‘in patient education and building trust so people know community pharmacy isn’t just about dispensing.’
The consensus is that demand is unlikely to evaporate overnight, but that banking on it indefinitely would be a mistake. Pharmacies best placed to weather any future downturn will be those that used the GLP-1 boom not as a destination, but as a launch pad
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