Novo leak reveals rankings of nearly 7,000 Danish health professionals

DR reports that an internal Novo Nordisk list ranks nearly 7,000 Danish doctors and nurses by their commercial value to the company and their loyalty to its products. The material was leaked to the trade publication Ingeniøren, which reported on the list.

The list places health professionals in categories from A to D, with A representing the highest commercial value to Novo. It also records whether they use the company’s medicines with patients. DR says it has seen excerpts of the material.

One person listed is Maria Krüger, chair of the Danish Society for General Practice and a practising doctor in Frederiksberg. She is placed in category B. The leaked data says she uses Wegovy and Ozempic with patients and is familiar with Tresiba, another Novo medicine, but does not use it with her patients.

Krüger told DR’s P1 Morgen that she was not surprised Novo systematically markets its medicines to doctors, but was upset to find herself on the list. She said she had not consented to being included and was concerned by the level of detail. She described the experience as extremely uncomfortable, saying she did not know where the information came from.

Professor Karsten Juhl Jørgensen of the University of Southern Denmark’s Department of Clinical Research said the rankings appeared designed to target marketing and maximise sales. He researches conflicts of interest and said similar lists have been discussed in US court cases for years. He said it was understandable that health professionals would find the practice uncomfortable.

Novo declined to verify the material, saying it was obtained through illegal activity, and did not agree to an interview with DR. The company told the broadcaster that using databases of health professionals is common practice in the pharmaceutical industry.

The Danish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry, of which Novo is a member, said it was natural for a company to keep basic information about people it deals with. Its head of public affairs and compliance, Carsten Blæsbjerg, said he expected everyone on the list had previously consented and that Novo followed the rules. Krüger said she had never given consent. Blæsbjerg could not explain why she was included, but said she could contact Novo to ask to be removed.

In June, the hacker group FulcrumSec claimed it had copied large amounts of Novo data, including research datasets, chemical compounds and AI models. The scope of the copied information had been unclear until the group leaked some of the material to Ingeniøren.