Ozempic and Wegovy both contain semaglutide. What separates them is the licence: official labelling describes Ozempic as authorised for type 2 diabetes, and Wegovy as authorised for weight management. European regulator pages say the same thing in their own words for each product.

What no longer separates them is the form. Each name used to mean an injection given once a week and nothing else. Labelling now covers tablets taken by mouth under both names as well, alongside Rybelsus, which was for years the only semaglutide tablet on the market. So the answer to what your medicine is comes from your own carton and prescription rather than from the brand you have heard of, and this page will not guess.

For anyone keeping records, that is an unusual situation to be in. Most of the time a different name means a different substance. Here the substance is shared and the paperwork is not, and the paperwork is what a clinic, an insurer, a pharmacist, and a customs officer all read.

One ingredient, two names, and why that is normal

A marketing authorisation is granted to a product, not to a molecule. When a company brings the same active ingredient to market for a second purpose, it typically arrives as its own product, with its own name, its own leaflet, its own pack presentation, and its own regulatory file. Each of those products then has to be assessed on its own terms rather than inheriting the other one's approval.

Semaglutide is not the only ingredient this has happened to. Liraglutide follows exactly the same pattern, sold as Saxenda in a weight-loss context and as Victoza in a diabetes one, which is a useful thing to know if you want to be sure the pattern is a normal feature of how medicines are licensed rather than something peculiar to one company or one class.

What actually changes in your records

The ingredient line in your notes does not change. The product line does, and so does everything that hangs off it.

  • The brand name on your dispensing label, which is the name a pharmacist or clinic will search for
  • The patient information leaflet that applies to you, since each product publishes its own
  • The licensed reason your prescriber has recorded, which is not always the reason you would give if asked casually
  • The form you were actually given, injection or tablets, since the brand name alone no longer settles it
  • The pack, device, and strength markings, which are printed per product and should be copied rather than paraphrased
  • The pathway your prescription came through, which in the UK for weight management is a specified service rather than something obtained on request

What to copy from the label

Copy it exactly. A record that says semaglutide and nothing else is missing the field most likely to be asked about, and a record that says the brand and nothing else is missing the one that stays stable when you travel or change provider.

  • Brand name as printed, including any capitalisation quirks
  • Active ingredient as printed
  • The strength as it appears on the pen or carton, transcribed rather than interpreted
  • The dispensing date and the pharmacy or clinic name
  • The date you took your first dose of that particular pack, if it differs from the dispensing date

Where notes usually go wrong

The most common failure is using the two names as though they were synonyms in your own diary, so that six months of entries no longer say which product you were on in which month. That matters more than it sounds, because a prescriber trying to understand a change in symptoms will want to line it up against what you were actually taking, and a diary that alternates names for the same period cannot support that.

A second failure is recording only what you searched for rather than what you were given. People read widely before a first appointment, and it is easy for the name you researched to end up in your notes instead of the name on the box you were handed. Checking the carton once, at the start, prevents a year of quietly wrong entries.

A third is dropping the brand once you feel settled, on the reasonable-sounding grounds that the ingredient is what matters. It is what matters clinically, and it is still not enough on its own when someone needs to know which leaflet, which device, and which licensed use applies to you.

There is a fourth that only shows up later. Notes kept across a house move, a change of employer, or a change of provider often survive as fragments, and the fragment that gets lost is almost always the boring administrative one: which clinic, which pharmacy, which country. Those fields cost nothing to write and are close to unrecoverable once a year has passed, so the cheapest time to record them is the day the pack is handed over.

If your prescription changes from one to the other

That decision sits with your prescriber, and the reasons for it can be clinical, practical, or to do with supply. What is yours to do is to date the change and keep the two periods separate in whatever you use to track. Write the last date of the old product and the first date of the new one, even when they are days apart, and keep recording the same things you were recording before so that the two stretches are actually comparable.

If your symptom pattern, appetite, or routine shifted around the same time, note that alongside the change rather than inside it. Recording the two as separate observations lets a clinician form their own view of whether they are connected, which is a more useful position to leave them in than a note that has already made the link for them.

What sharing an ingredient does not mean

It does not mean the two products are interchangeable, and it does not mean that anything written about one applies unchanged to the other. UK government guidance is direct on this point: these medicines vary in how they are used and in the conditions they can be used for, and switching without medical advice may increase the risk of experiencing side effects or make the treatment less effective. Dose figures quoted for one product are not a guide to the other, and this page publishes none for either.

If you have been given a product whose name you do not recognise, or you are unsure which one you are currently on, the label and the leaflet answer it in seconds, and your pharmacist can confirm it. If you are experiencing severe or rapidly worsening symptoms, seek urgent medical help rather than spending time on the paperwork.