By Anjalee Khemlani

GoodRx (GDRX) is joining in on the GLP-1 action with an announcement on Monday that it will begin selling both of Novo Nordisk's (NVO) GLP-1 drugs, Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss, at a cash price of $499 per month.

The partnership comes as telehealth and digital health platforms are increasingly viewed as ways to provide greater access to the in-demand products.

GoodRx CEO Wendy Barnes told Yahoo Finance that while the company isn't first out of the gate with the strategy, it believes it's coming in at the right time.

"There's no question we could have tried to do something sooner from a compounded alternative pathway, but we have been very clear in our belief that it needed to be FDA-approved, lawfully approved. It just wasn't a pathway that we were going to support," Barnes said.

Telehealth platforms like Hims & Hers (HIMS) have recently been under pressure after Novo ended a relationship with them, when Hims refused to stop selling compounded, or copycat versions, of the GLP-1s.

Compounded versions of the popular drugs have been on the market for several years, and were originally allowed by the FDA when Novo Nordisk and competitor Eli Lilly (LLY) were unable to meet the demand of the market for their GLP-1s. With the shortages declared over, the copycats are now illegal, but compounding pharmacies and their sellers claim to be lawfully selling them through a loophole in the law, known as personalized medicine. If a patient is unable to tolerate the side effects of a drug, a compounded version is often used.

In this photo illustration, the GoodRx Holdings logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images). SOPA Images via Getty Images