> but would be curious if anyone knows what's special about Ozempic delivery that can't be served by a commodity syringe.

They can't charge as much. That's basically it. Generic semaglutide from compounding pharmacies (which have their own issues for sure) is under $150 a month cash-pay these days.

The real issue with syringes and self administration is that the vast majority of the population are not comfortable with it and don't have the diligence to do it correctly every time, so you get under/over dosage or noncompliance.

That being said, the autoinjector format doesn't really solve that problem, it just slightly ameliorates it, in exchange for approximately 8x the cost.

> By chance I just talked to someone with deeper knowledge on this and they said the current constraint is actually ramping up supply of the delivery mechanism, not the drug.

The article says this:

> Surprisingly, the study found that the biggest cost in producing Ozempic is not the active medicine, called semaglutide, but the disposable pens used to inject it. They can be made for no more than $2.83 per month’s supply, the authors concluded, based on interviews with former employees and consultants to injection device manufacturers. One Ozempic pen is used weekly and lasts a month.

So while the injection pens are significantly more expensive than manufacturing the drug itself, they are still relatively cheap. So it seems to be not a major problem to strongly ramp up production here as well.

Which suggests any supply shortage will be resolved relatively quickly. Perhaps in less than a year? Then the limiting factor will not be the supply but the market price.

> what's special about Ozempic delivery

People don't want to use a commodity syringe. People are scared of needles. The autoinjectors take most of the fear out of it.

hims sells the generic version for a fraction of the price but you have to do regular injections