Novo Nordisk has been fined 45,000 kroner plus VAT by the pharmaceutical industry’s ethics committee over a Wegovy patient support program run with Falck. The collaboration has now been discontinued.
According to reporting by DR, the Ethical Committee for the Pharmaceutical Industry, ENLI, found that the arrangement broke rules on financial benefits to healthcare professionals. The program was announced at the start of 2026 and offered patients on Wegovy advice on diet, lifestyle and other support from Falck specialists.
Novo Nordisk paid for the support at Falck. The companies stopped the program in June after a first ruling, which was appealed, DR reports. Business daily Børsen adds that the committee also required the project to stop in its existing form.
Committee points to doctors’ workload
Patients had to be prescribed the medicine by their general practitioner before joining. ENLI concluded that doctors gained an indirect financial benefit, because referring patients eased their own workload.
Rikke Thomassen, head of the secretariat at ENLI, told DR’s P1 Morgen that the advertising code bans offers that directly or indirectly benefit health professionals and promote a company’s product. She said the committee assessed that the program provided such support to general practitioners.
Kent Kristensen, a health law lecturer at Aalborg University, noted that Novo marketed the scheme to doctors as a way to ease their workflows. Speaking to P1 Morgen, he said the company even described some patients as time consuming.
Kristensen said the setup could shape prescribing patterns, making Wegovy the first choice over rival products. He named Novo Nordisk competitor Eli Lilly as one example of another maker of weight loss medicine.
Patient data part of the deal
Under the agreement with Falck, Novo was promised anonymized patient data. According to DR, this covered areas such as treatment, prescription history, gender, age and the risk of patients dropping out.
The decision states that the data collection must be presumed to serve Novo’s commercial interests beyond the purpose of the support program. The committee warned of a risk that the program would be seen as obscuring significant commercial interests. Kristensen called that finding striking, saying patients partly paid with their health data.
Novo declined to be interviewed but told DR in writing that it accepts the decision while disagreeing with it. The company rejected the view that the Falck collaboration amounted to financial support for general practice, saying it targeted patients living with severe obesity.
Novo said it never received any data from Falck, and that it will continue working with private and public actors on obesity. About 150 patients joined the program, according to the company.
Falck also declined an interview and referred questions to Novo. In a written reply to DR, Falck said patients must pay for the program themselves once their first six months are over.
