Beyond the Hype: Where and how Digital Health Founders Should Build in the GLP-1 Market

A few years ago, only endocrinologists and obesity specialists were talking about GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. Today, they’re part of the cultural fabric. Dinner conversations, late-night comedy bits, corporate HR meetings, and boardroom strategy sessions all touch on the same reality: GLP-1s have gone mainstream.

The numbers explain why. Goldman Sachs projects the GLP-1 market will climb to $100–150 billion by 2030, with more than 15 million Americans on these drugs in the coming years. It’s one of the most explosive healthcare trends in recent history.

But here’s the paradox: the hype is enormous, yet the long-term picture is far less straightforward. Nearly 65% of patients stop treatment within a year. Costs remain prohibitive, at around $1,000 a month before rebates. And insurers are struggling, misclassifying GLP-1 users as healthier only to see outcomes decline once they drop off.

That disconnect (between promise and reality) is where the real opportunity lies. For digital health founders and investors, the play isn’t in prescribing. That layer is already crowded. The durable opportunities lie in developing systems, tools, and experiences that make GLP-1 therapy effective, sustainable, and scalable.

What we'll go over:

1. The hidden work: Wrap-around care
2. Where payers and employers are looking
3. Supply chain and trust: The fragile backbone
4. The ripple effect across industries
5. The build vs. buy crossroads
6. Final Thoughts

The hidden work: Wrap-around care

Anyone who has been on a GLP-1 will tell you: at first, it feels like a jetpack for behavior change. You eat less, move more, and feel a momentum you’ve never felt before. But human nature kicks in. Habits reassert themselves, motivation fades, and side effects take their toll. Without structure, most patients backslide.

This is where wrap-around care becomes the differentiator. Think of it as the scaffolding that turns a spark into a flame.

• Behavioral reinforcement through coaching, habit loops, and gamified engagement keeps patients connected to their goals.
• Adherence engines powered by predictive analytics can detect when a patient is likely to drop off and intervene before it happens.
• Side effect management tools, from nausea tracking to proactive clinical outreach, can stop small frustrations from turning into abandonment.

The companies that endure won’t be the ones racing to sign prescriptions. They’ll be the ones creating ecosystems that make the prescription meaningful.

Where payers and employers are looking

From the payer perspective, GLP-1s are both promising and risky. On one hand, they deliver meaningful health outcomes: weight loss, lower cardiovascular risk and better metabolic health. On the other hand, the cost curve is brutal. At scale, these drugs threaten to overwhelm employer health plans and insurance budgets.

That tension is a door cracked wide open for startups.

Employers and insurers are desperate for models that balance access with sustainability. Navigation platforms that simplify coverage, rebates, and prior authorizations can cut through the current maze. Tiered pricing models, bundling medication with structured coaching or digital programs, can create predictable cost structures. And platforms that demonstrate measurable improvements in adherence will find payers not only willing but eager to partner.

Put simply: solving the payer pain point isn’t just a nice-to-have.

Supply chain and trust: The fragile backbone

If you’ve tried to fill a GLP-1 prescription recently, you’ve probably run into shortages, delays, or heard whispers about counterfeit products. The supply chain is straining under demand, and where there are cracks, opportunists rush in.

This fragility presents another lane for founders. Real-time pharmacy matching, automated refill forecasting, and networks of verified compounding pharmacies could stabilize access. On the trust side, authentication tools like QR codes, blockchain verification, or transparency dashboards can give both patients and providers confidence that what’s in the pen is real.

In a market this hot, reliability and trust are as valuable as the drug itself.

The ripple effect across industries

The GLP-1 revolution isn’t confined to healthcare. As patients’ habits change, entire industries are feeling the shift.

• Food and beverage brands are already racing to meet the demand for protein-rich, fiber-heavy alternatives as sugary snack consumption dips.
• Fitness and wellness businesses see a surge in customers who feel lighter, more energetic, and newly motivated to exercise.
• Retail and apparel are being reshaped by changing body sizes and self-image.
• Even travel is affected, with activity-centered vacations replacing food-centric getaways.

And perhaps most intriguingly, early studies suggest GLP-1s may even reduce addictive behaviors, creating an opening for digital-first behavioral health solutions.

In other words, this isn’t just a healthcare story. It’s a consumer identity shift toward health-conscious, tech-enabled living.

The build vs. buy crossroads

Once you know where value can be added in the GLP-1 ecosystem (adherence, payer alignment, supply chain integrity) the next question is how to build for it. And that’s where founders run headfirst into one of the most consequential decisions in digital health: the Build vs. Buy dilemma.

This choice is not just operational. In a market projected to hit $100–150 billion by 2030, it can define a company’s scalability, defensibility, and ultimately, survival. Move too slowly by trying to build everything in-house, and you’ll miss the market window. Buy too many off-the-shelf solutions, and you risk becoming a thin layer over someone else’s infrastructure. The companies that last will be the ones that strike the right balance.

Before we dive in, let's go over the links between digital health and the GLP-1 industry:

Personalized Medicine Through Data and AI:

One of the most powerful applications of digital health tools in GLP-1 therapy is the ability to personalize care:

• Data integration: Wearables, apps, and connected devices can continuously collect information on blood glucose levels, body weight, and lifestyle patterns.
• AI-driven insights: Using this data, AI in healthcare can optimize dosing schedules and recommend tailored treatment plans, improving both safety and efficacy.

Remote Patient Monitoring for Continuous Care

Remote patient monitoring is reshaping how clinicians and patients manage GLP-1 therapy:

• Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM): CGM devices seamlessly integrate with apps, enabling real-time adjustments to therapy.
• Telemedicine check-ins: Virtual visits reduce the need for in-person appointments while maintaining consistent oversight and support for diabetes management.

Driving Adherence 

Patient success with GLP-1 therapy often depends on consistent adherence, an area where digital health tools shine:

• Mobile health apps: Push notifications, reminders, and progress tracking help patients stay on top of their treatment plans.
• Behavioral nudges: Apps can incorporate proven behavioral science strategies like gamification, guiding patients toward healthier habits like balanced diets and regular exercise.

Integrated Care Models and Patient Empowerment

• Coordinated communication: Digital platforms enable seamless collaboration among physicians, coaches, and specialists.
• Patient empowerment: By giving individuals access to their own health data, digital health tools transform them from passive patients into active participants in their care journey.

So, with this in mind, when making a project come to life,  what does the build vs buy balance look like in GLP-1?

1. Cost and Timing:

Speed matters here more than in most healthtech markets. Prescription platforms are flooding in, and competition is fierce. Buying existing solutions, such as EHR integration, e-prescribing, and scheduling, can help early-stage companies quickly validate without sinking capital into reinventing the wheel. But in the longer term, the costs of licenses and dependencies pile up. Core components that define differentiation, like adherence engines, behavioral reinforcement models, and data-driven retention systems, are almost always worth building, even if it means a higher upfront investment.

2. Intellectual Property and Defensibility:

Investors in this space are looking for more than growth; they’re looking for moats. Proprietary data sets on adherence patterns, novel coaching methodologies, or predictive side-effect management can all serve as defensible IP. What you build should map directly to what you want investors to value most. Buy commoditized infrastructure; build what makes you impossible to copy.

3. User Experience:

GLP-1 programs live or die on adoption and retention. Patients navigating side effects won’t tolerate clunky apps, and providers won’t scale on inefficient platforms. That means UX is not a “nice-to-have,” it’s a core differentiator. Founders should prioritize building or deeply customizing the patient-facing and provider-facing layers of their stack, while outsourcing auxiliary parts like revenue cycle tools or marketing CRMs.

4. Flexibility in a Moving Market:

The GLP-1 landscape is evolving fast: new drugs, new indications, and new payer policies are emerging almost monthly. Overreliance on a single vendor can lock you into workflows that won’t age well. Founders need to think ahead by choosing modular, interoperable components they can pivot around when the science or reimbursement shifts.

5. Compliance and Risk:

With GLP-1s, compliance isn’t just box-checking. You’re dealing with HIPAA, SOC2, HiTrust, and the liability of prescribing controlled medications in a market already rife with counterfeits. Here, buying from trusted vendors often reduces risk compared to trying to build compliance-heavy systems from scratch. But when it comes to sensitive engagement data or proprietary coaching models, controlling the stack is worth the compliance lift.

6. Maintenance and Focus:

Founders in this space should be ruthless about focusing internal resources on their core value proposition. Don’t spend cycles debugging a scheduling system when your strategic advantage is patient retention or side-effect management. Leverage vendors for standard infrastructure, but own the technology that defines your brand and outcome metrics.

For investors, this balance is telling. Startups that demonstrate a thoughtful Build vs. Buy strategy, anchored in speed today but defensibility tomorrow, signal operational maturity. Those that don’t risk becoming interchangeable with the dozens of new entrants racing into the space.

The analogy is simple: building in the GLP-1 market is like engineering a race car. You can buy the engine off the shelf (the drug itself, and standard infrastructure), but the chassis, steering, and aerodynamics (the parts that actually keep you on the track) have to be custom. That’s where you win the race.

Theory is one thing, execution is another. Discover how we’re helping companies build smarter in the GLP-1 market: read the case study.

Final Thoughts

The GLP-1 boom is real. But the companies that survive the hype cycle won’t be the ones chasing prescriptions; they’ll be the ones building the rails beneath them.

That means:

• Creating platforms that drive adherence and retention.
• Building payer- and employer-facing solutions that align incentives.
• Stabilizing fragile supply chains with trust and transparency.
• Expanding into adjacent consumer markets reshaped by the GLP-1 identity shift.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape not just a drug market, but a healthcare paradigm. The winners will be those who see beyond the hype and commit to the unglamorous, but indispensable, work of making GLP-1s stick.