Novo Nordisk becomes ‘Novo’ as diabetes giant rebrands for health market

Image courtesy of Novo Nordisk.

Novo Nordisk, one of the biggest names in diabetes for more than a century, is becoming simply Novo.

The Danish pharmaceutical company unveiled a major global rebrand on 14 September, adopting Novo as its everyday name alongside a redesigned logo and the message “Lasting Health Starts Now.” Its legal company name will remain Novo Nordisk A/S.

On the surface it may look like a conventional corporate makeover. But Novo is presenting the change as something much bigger: part of an attempt to operate faster and compete in what it describes as a “faster, more competitive and increasingly consumer-driven market.”

For a company whose history is inseparable from insulin, it also says something about just how much its business has changed.

What is changing?

Novo will now use the single Novo name in everyday communications, although its medicines and legal company name are unaffected.

The familiar Apis bull logo has been redesigned, while the company's colours and typography have also been updated. Novo says the rebrand is intended to reflect the way people increasingly engage with and manage their health.

Alongside the visual changes comes a new corporate culture programme called “The Novo Way.” It puts consumers and patients at the centre, alongside greater competitiveness, faster decision-making, clearer priorities and continued emphasis on patient safety and ethics.

That choice of language is perhaps more interesting than the shorter name itself.

People living with diabetes have traditionally been described by pharmaceutical companies primarily as patients. Novo now operates in a world where prescription medicines, particularly GLP-1 treatments for obesity, increasingly sit alongside consumer-facing healthcare, self-pay markets and digital services.

CEO Mike Doustdar says healthcare needs to become more responsive and easier to fit into people's everyday lives.

Novo is still a major part of insulin treatment in the UK

For UK readers, Novo Nordisk remains particularly familiar because the company makes some of the country's most widely used insulins.

Novo's UK medicines list confirms that all of these products remain licensed in the UK.

They are used across both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. People with type 1 generally require rapid-acting insulin alongside basal insulin, unless rapid-acting insulin is being continuously delivered through a pump. People with type 2 may use basal, mealtime or mixed insulin depending on their individual treatment.

Novo's position is particularly strong in rapid-acting insulin.

In the 12 months to June 2026, NHS England dispensed around 2.75 million insulin-aspart prescription items, costing £114.7 million at net ingredient cost.

Both NovoRapid and Fiasp contain insulin aspart, although Sanofi's Trurapi does too, so total insulin-aspart prescribing cannot simply be treated as Novo's market share.

Product-level prescribing shows that NovoRapid FlexPen accounted for around 35% of insulin-aspart items, NovoRapid Penfill another 19% and NovoRapid vials around 16%.

Together those three NovoRapid presentations represented around 70% of insulin-aspart items. Because insulin aspart itself accounted for about 82.7% of the short-acting insulin category, those three NovoRapid presentations alone work out at approximately 58% of all short-acting insulin prescription items in England.

That still excludes Fiasp, so Novo's total presence in rapid-acting insulin is higher. Prescription items should not be confused with individual people using insulin.

Novo's other insulins remain significant too

Tresiba, or insulin degludec, generated £43.4 million of NHS prescribing at net ingredient cost during the 12 months to June 2026, with 733,139 items dispensed. It represented around 14.3% of intermediate and long-acting insulin items in June.

Levemir, or insulin detemir, accounted for another £19.2 million, although prescribing fell 30% year-on-year as the product heads towards withdrawal. UK supplies are expected to last until the end of December 2026.

Biphasic insulin aspart, principally associated with NovoMix 30, generated another £28.7 million of prescribing in the same 12-month period.

So while Novo is increasingly associated with Ozempic and Wegovy, insulin remains a substantial part of its relationship with people living with diabetes in the UK.

How does Novo compare with Abbott, Dexcom and Eli Lilly?

NHS spending provides another indication of the scale of the companies now operating around diabetes care.

NHS England says the cost of medicines and appliances used to treat diabetes reached £2.31 billion in 2025/26, more than double the level a decade earlier. It specifically identifies tirzepatide, semaglutide and interstitial glucose sensors such as FreeStyle Libre and Dexcom among the major drivers of that increase.

The figures are not directly equivalent manufacturer revenues and should be read with some caution.

Lilly's £574 million figure is for Mounjaro alone in 2025/26. Tirzepatide is used for both type 2 diabetes and obesity, and public prescribing data cannot cleanly separate those indications. Even so, it became the most expensive individual medicine dispensed in the community in England that year.

The Novo estimate uses the latest identifiable prescribing data. Semaglutide cost £137.1 million in the 12 months to June 2026, while insulin degludec cost £43.4 million, insulin detemir £19.2 million and biphasic insulin aspart £28.7 million. A conservative estimate of the major NovoRapid presentations adds around £80 million.

That puts Novo's readily identifiable total at around £309 million or more, before Fiasp, Actrapid, Insulatard and some other products are fully counted. Semaglutide also includes prescribing for obesity as well as diabetes.

The figures nevertheless illustrate how financially significant a relatively small group of pharmaceutical and medtech companies have become within NHS diabetes management.

Importantly, these are prescribing costs or net ingredient costs, not necessarily the amounts ultimately received by each manufacturer. Discounts, rebates and other commercial arrangements can reduce the final NHS cost.

From insulin company to GLP-1 giant

Novo's own global figures show just how dramatically its business has changed.

The company generated DKK 207.1 billion from diabetes care in 2025, but only DKK 53.1 billion of that came from insulin. Its GLP-1 medicines for type 2 diabetes generated DKK 152.2 billion, while obesity medicines generated another DKK 82.3 billion.

Insulin sales fell 4% during the year, while obesity-care sales increased 26%.

Together, diabetes and obesity generated around DKK 289.5 billion, accounting for the overwhelming majority of Novo's DKK 309.1 billion total sales.

That makes the timing of the rebrand particularly interesting.

Novo is not abandoning insulin or diabetes, but the business adopting the simpler Novo identity in 2026 is very different from the Novo Nordisk created by two insulin companies in 1989.

Why rebrand now?

The change comes during a major restructuring of the company.

Mike Doustdar took over as chief executive in 2025, and Novo subsequently announced plans to reduce its global workforce by around 9,000 positions, including around 5,000 in Denmark.

Novo said the restructuring was intended to simplify the organisation, speed up decisions and redirect resources towards opportunities in diabetes and obesity. It explicitly linked the changes to an obesity market that had become more competitive and consumer-driven.

The company also faces intense competition from Eli Lilly.

Novo's own figures show its global diabetes value market share falling by 3.6 percentage points to 30.1% during 2025, while its 2025 annual report describes changing market dynamics following several years of exceptional growth.

The rebrand therefore arrives alongside a much wider attempt to make Novo faster, more commercially focused and more responsive to the way people now access and think about healthcare.

What happens next?

More detail about what the newly branded Novo intends to become should arrive almost immediately.

The company is holding a Capital Markets Day in London on 21 September, when management is expected to set out its updated corporate strategy and new strategic ambitions.

For people living with diabetes, the logo on a NovoRapid pen or Tresiba box may ultimately be the least important part of the change.

More revealing is what sits behind it: one of the companies most closely associated with the history of insulin now sees its future spanning diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and an increasingly consumer-facing healthcare market.

Sources: Novo corporate rebrand announcement and 2025 Annual Report; Novo UK medicines information; NHS Business Services Authority prescribing statistics and open prescribing data; DoseTrend analysis of NHSBSA data; UK Levemir discontinuation information; Statistics Denmark; Novo Holdings.

About the editor

Samantha is editor of Libre Life and founder of Love My Libre. She writes about diabetes medtech, CGM wear, hybrid-closed loop systems and practical real-world device use.