Our mandate

The Route Map publishes educational content for UK readers trying to understand how to legally access Ozempic®, Wegovy® or Mounjaro® — through the NHS, a private prescription, or a regulated online pharmacy. We do not sell medicines. We do not recommend suppliers by name outside a single, clearly marked page unrelated to these medicines. We do not advise on dosage, diagnosis, or any individual treatment decision. Our editorial focus is narrow and specific: does the route in front of you meet the standard of a genuine, regulated prescription — and if it's an online pharmacy, does it hold up against a checkable standard?

Everything we publish is written to help a UK reader answer that question with more confidence than they had before reading it.

What counts as a legitimate route

The core criteria behind every guide we publish are drawn from how UK medicines regulation actually works. We treat a route as legitimate when it satisfies all of the following:

Criterion 1 — Prescription-only, always

Ozempic®, Wegovy® and Mounjaro® are prescription-only medicines under the MHRA framework. Any route that offers them without a prescription fails immediately, regardless of what else it gets right.

Criterion 2 — A genuine clinical assessment

Whether it's a GP appointment or an online questionnaire, the assessment must be reviewed by a real, UK-registered prescriber who can decline to prescribe. A form that leads to checkout regardless of the answers given is not an assessment.

Criterion 3 — Checkable pharmacy registration

For an online pharmacy specifically, we look for registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council, a named superintendent pharmacist, and the official MHRA distance-selling logo — all of it verifiable independently, not just claimed on the page.

Criterion 4 — Dispensing by a licensed pharmacy

The medicine itself must be dispensed by a pharmacy operating within the regulated UK supply chain, not shipped from an unclear or unlicensed source once a form has been filled in.

Criterion 5 — No promise made in advance

A legitimate route never guarantees you'll be prescribed before it has assessed you. Marketing that promises the outcome ahead of the clinical decision is a signal the assessment is not a real one.

What we do not verify

The Route Map does not operate as a pharmacy, a clinic, or a regulator. We do not personally inspect every online pharmacy we mention in general terms, and we do not certify any specific provider as safe or suitable for you. Our editorial work explains how to assess a route yourself — it does not replace that assessment.

We also do not provide medical or legal advice. For a personal decision about eligibility, prescribing, or treatment, the right sources are a licensed UK prescriber, the NHS, or the relevant regulator — that sits outside our editorial scope.

Route red flags — what signals rejection

Our guides consistently flag the following as ✗ rejected signals that a route is not legitimate:

A route clears our editorial threshold — ✓ accepted — only when it satisfies all five criteria above and raises none of the flags listed here.

How we research

The regulatory and clinical framing in our guides is drawn from:

  1. Publicly available MHRA guidance on prescription-only medicines and distance-selling requirements for online pharmacies.
  2. NICE guidance on the clinical pathways for type 2 diabetes and weight management, for how NHS eligibility is generally structured.
  3. Each medicine's published Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC), for what it is actually authorised for.
  4. The General Pharmaceutical Council's public standards for registered pharmacies and pharmacists.

We do not rely on any single seller's marketing material as a source, and we do not publish individualised legal or medical advice — see "What we do not verify" above for where that question belongs instead.

Update cadence and corrections

Every editorial page on this site carries an "Updated" date. If you identify a factual error, contact us at [email protected] with the subject line "Correction request" and we will review within 14 days. Confirmed errors are corrected promptly and the page's update date is revised.

What we never publish

As a matter of firm editorial policy, the following does not appear on this site:

No anonymous authors or invented personas

The Route Map publishes under the brand name as an editorial project, not under individual bylines or invented expert personas. We do not fabricate credentials or clinical qualifications. Our authority rests on the sourcing rigour of what we publish, not on a fabricated person with a fabricated CV.