Lilly adds Alzheimer’s disease care to DTC telehealth platform

 Eli Lilly is expanding its menu of direct-to-consumer healthcare offerings. The Big Pharma announced Thursday that its LillyDirect platform will now connect U.S. users to both in-person and virtual care options for Alzheimer’s disease.

LillyDirect launched early last year with an aim of cutting out the middleman to connect people with doctor’s appointments and access to Lilly medicines at lower costs. To start, it offered services for diabetes, migraine and obesity; that list has since expanded to include sleep apnea—as Lilly’s GLP-1 blockbuster Zepbound was approved in the indication late last year—and, now, Alzheimer’s.

The new offering is focused on shortening the time it takes to reach an Alzheimer’s diagnosis and therefore begin treatment, according to Lilly, citing data showing that the average wait time to see a dementia specialist is expected to rise above one year in 2025.

“We know that early diagnosis and care can make a big difference for people living with Alzheimer’s disease. By expanding this platform, we hope to help patients identify and access additional independent specialty care capacity, which can coordinate with a patient's existing care team,” David Hyman, M.D., Lilly’s chief medical officer, said in the announcement.

The “Memory & Thinking” section of the LillyDirect site includes separate links to set up an in-person or virtual care appointment, as well as information about what to expect during the initial visit and, if necessary, throughout the subsequent Alzheimer’s treatment process. The site also features a resource library of videos and articles about brain health.

Unlike those for other conditions included on the LillyDirect platform, the Alzheimer’s section doesn’t offer access to mail-order pharmacy options to send Lilly meds directly to a user’s door—even though Lilly does market Kisunla as a treatment for early symptomatic Alzheimer’s. The focus instead is on “education and pathways to connect people to independent provider options,” per the release.

Citi analysts called the LillyDirect expansion “a positive step in a challenging field,” referring to current barriers to reaching an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Because the site doesn’t directly offer access to treatments, however, “the onus remains on patients to take the first step,” they wrote in a note Thursday.

With that in mind and overarching barriers to care still in place, the analysts said they “maintain tempered expectations for Kisunla,” noting that “neuroscience’s growth will be a slow grind relative to the company’s other franchises.”

Lilly took care in Thursday’s announcement to note several times that all in-person and virtual care providers that LillyDirect users may connect with are “independent.”

That’s been a major question on some U.S. senators’ minds. A group of legislators sent letters last fall to both Lilly and Pfizer—which hosts a similar DTC care platform dubbed PfizerForAll—investigating any possible conflicts of interest created by contracts between drugmakers and prescribers.

Both pharmas have maintained that their contracted telehealth providers are free to prescribe any company’s therapies. Still, the senators have continued to plow forward in their probe, sending another set of letters earlier this month questioning the platforms’ telehealth partners about their contracts and their prescribers’ experiences with the platforms.

https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/lilly-adds-alzheimers-disease-care-dtc-telehealth-platform