Medication reaches a patient in Singapore through one of a small number of lawful routes, and which route you are on changes which rules apply. A licensed clinic may supply its own patients on a doctor's written instructions; a licensed retail pharmacy may dispense against an electronically transmitted prescription and deliver. Both are ordinary regulated supply. What is harder to answer is the question everyone actually asks — how a refrigerated medicine is supposed to travel — because Singapore's standard for that is sold rather than published. This article sets out what is on the record, and marks where the record stops.
Remote provision: the licence mode under which telemedicine operates in Singapore. It is the same Outpatient Medical Service licence, delivered remotely — not a separate category of care.
Who may lawfully supply the medicine to you
Three routes, set out in one regulation.
A prescription-only medicine may be supplied by retail only where one of the following applies: the supply is made at or from a licensed retail pharmacy; the supply is made by a healthcare service licensee to a patient of that licensee, in accordance with the written instructions of a qualified practitioner who is that licensee's personnel; or the supplier is a qualified practitioner, or someone acting on their instructions, and the supply is made to a patient under their care (Therapeutic Products Regulations).
"Qualified practitioner" is defined in the same instrument as a registered medical practitioner under the Medical Registration Act 1997. So the prescription behind any lawful supply is a Singapore doctor's.
MOH has stated the same position in Parliament for these medicines specifically: GLP-1 medicines "are prescription medicines which can only be dispensed by a registered medical practitioner or a licensed retail pharmacy to a patient with a valid prescription", and are "strictly prohibited from advertisements and sales on local online platforms" (MOH 2024).
At GetLean, a doctor assesses you and we dispense the medication ourselves rather than routing you to a third party. The broader legal picture is set out in GLP-1 medication in Singapore: what is legal and licensed.
The pharmacy route, and why it may not be the route you are on
This is the distinction most articles on this subject miss.
HSA publishes guidance on supplying registered therapeutic products through e-pharmacy — a mode "provided by licensed pharmacy in Singapore using a secured online platform", where prescriptions are transmitted "through a closed-loop electronic interface from the qualified practitioner or collaborative prescribing practitioner to the qualified pharmacist" and products "are then delivered directly to the patients". That guidance requires the pharmacy to comply with Good Distribution Practice for handling and storage; to comply with Singapore Standard SS 644 where a medication delivery service is provided; to pack products so as to protect them "from heat and moisture which can cause product deterioration"; and to label what is supplied with the patient's details, the medication's details, dosing instructions, the dispensed date, the pharmacy's address and contact details, and cautionary labels where applicable. Controlled drugs and compounded medicines are outside the scope of the e-pharmacy route entirely (HSA).
Every one of those requirements attaches to a licensed retail pharmacy. A licensed clinic supplying its own patients is the separate pathway described above, and applying one route's requirements to the other misdescribes both. If you want to know which route a provider is using, that is a fair and answerable question to ask them.
MOH restated the boundary in Parliament in March 2026: "All telemedicine service providers need to have doctors as licensed holders", and "Retail pharmacies, under the oversight of a qualified pharmacist, must comply with the Singapore Standard Guideline for the supply and delivery of medication (SS 644: 2025)" (MOH 2026).
Singapore has a delivery standard, and its contents are not public
SS 644 exists. It was approved on 29 April 2019 by the Biomedical and Health Standards Committee under the purview of the Singapore Standards Council, and the current edition is SS 644:2025. Its publicly readable preview confirms a contents page listing clause 6, Medication integrity, with subclauses on medication shelf life, packaging of medication, and storage and delivery conditions; and clause 7, Medication delivery, with subclauses on general requirements, delivery via a logistics service provider, the delivery destination, and reconciliation of medication delivery (SS 644).
The substantive text of those clauses sits behind a paywall. The standard is sold by Enterprise Singapore, only the front matter and contents page can be read without buying it, and its copyright notice forbids reproduction without written permission.
So: this article can tell you that Singapore has a standard covering storage and delivery conditions, and that a retail pharmacy offering delivery must comply with it. It cannot tell you what temperature, what container, what cooling arrangement or what transit time that standard specifies, because those clauses have not been read. A search of HSA's whole e-pharmacy guidance for "cold", "refrigerat*" and "temperature" returns no matches at all, and HSA's personal-medications page contains no cold-chain content either.
There is, in other words, no publicly readable Singapore rule stating a temperature, a container type, an ice-pack requirement or a transit-time limit for delivering a refrigerated medicine to a patient's home. Constructing one out of the product labels would be inventing a regulatory requirement, and the labels are answering a different question in any case — they tell a patient how to keep a pen, not how a courier must carry one.
What the labels do say about keeping a pen
All four presentations are refrigerated before first use, and after that the day-limits diverge sharply.
Unopened, every one of them is stored at 2°C to 8°C. After that, the figures belong to specific products and pens and are not interchangeable:
- Single-dose semaglutide pen or syringe: may be kept at 8°C to 30°C for up to 28 days before the cap is removed. Discard it if it has been frozen, exposed to light or to temperatures above 30°C, or has been out of the refrigerator for 28 days or longer (label).
- Multi-dose semaglutide pen: 56 days after first use, with the same discard trigger above 30°C. The room-temperature range itself is stated two different ways in two sections of the current label, and that inconsistency is unresolved — so follow the leaflet packed with your own pen and ask a pharmacist to confirm it, rather than taking a number from an article (label).
- Single-dose tirzepatide pen or vial: may be kept unrefrigerated at temperatures not exceeding 30°C for up to a total of 21 days, then discarded regardless of how much medicine remains (label).
- Multi-dose tirzepatide vial or pen: discarded at the earliest of 30 days at room temperature, 30 days after first use, or after the fourth weekly dose — again, even if medicine is left (label).
Four products, four different day-figures, one shared ceiling of 30°C. Anyone who tells you "a GLP-1 pen keeps for a month out of the fridge" has flattened four rules into one. The full detail, including injection sites, sharps disposal and what Singapore allows you to carry when travelling, is in GLP-1 injection sites, storage and travel rules.
These are all US label documents. Singapore's registered product information publishes indication, dosing and contraindications on the public formulary, so a Singapore-specific storage section is not available to quote.
What arrives, and what to do about it
The practical questions — what is in the box, who brings it, what the packaging is meant to do, and what happens if a delivery arrives warm or is missed — are operational rather than regulatory, and this article will not invent answers to them.
What GetLean can state is the part it controls. Medication is dispatched only after payment is confirmed, in one dispatch a day at 2pm on working days — injectables by a cold-chain courier; a payment confirmed after 2pm goes out the next working day, so a first delivery typically arrives the working day after your consultation.
What can be said generally is that counselling is expected of everyone. MOH's parliamentary reply states that "Patients must be counselled concerning the proper use of dispensed medications regardless of care setting" (MOH 2026). That is a statement of the obligation rather than a description of any particular provider's practice, and it is a reasonable thing to ask about before you commit to a provider.
One more practical point, because it interacts with delivery. Singapore's registered instruction for a missed dose is not the same as the American one, and it is not the same for the two medicines either. If a delivery is delayed and a dose is missed, the rule to follow is the one for your product — which we cover in what to do if you miss a GLP-1 dose. A dose decision is a clinical one, so the prescriber is the person to ask.
What the consultation before all of this looks like is described in what happens at a GLP-1 video consultation.
This article describes the position as verified against primary sources in August 2026. Regulation changes, and standards are revised; check the current position before acting on anything here.
Common questions
Who is allowed to supply GLP-1 medication in Singapore?
A licensed retail pharmacy, a licensed healthcare service supplying its own patient on the written instructions of a doctor who is that licensee's personnel, or a doctor supplying a patient under their care (Therapeutic Products Regulations). MOH has stated the same in Parliament for these medicines specifically (MOH 2024).
What are Singapore's rules for delivering a refrigerated medicine to your home?
There is a national standard, SS 644, and its substantive text is behind a paywall. Its contents page confirms a clause on storage and delivery conditions exists (SS 644), but no temperature, container type or transit-time limit is publicly readable, so this article does not state one.
How long can the medication sit outside a fridge?
It depends entirely on which product and which pen. The US labels give 28 days for the single-dose semaglutide pen (label), 56 days for the multi-dose semaglutide pen (label), 21 days for the single-dose tirzepatide pen or vial (label) and 30 days for the multi-dose tirzepatide presentation (label). These figures are not interchangeable.
Is an online pharmacy the same as a clinic that delivers?
No, they are different regulatory routes. HSA's e-pharmacy guidance governs a licensed retail pharmacy receiving prescriptions through a closed-loop electronic interface (HSA), while a licensed clinic supplying its own patients is a separate pathway in the Therapeutic Products Regulations (regulation 11).
Should someone explain how to use the medication?
MOH has stated in Parliament that patients must be counselled concerning the proper use of dispensed medications regardless of care setting (MOH 2026). That is a statement of the obligation rather than a description of what any particular provider does.