Four things about a weight-loss provider can be verified before you pay, from public records, in about five minutes: whether the service is licensed, whether the doctor is registered in Singapore, whether a real-time video consultation happens on a first visit, and whether the product is one on HSA's register. Everything else is judgement. These four are matters of record, and this article shows you where each record lives. Each is provider-neutral — the same register, the same test, whoever you happen to be checking.
Licensee: a provider holding a licence under the Healthcare Services Act. Licensed services appear on the public HealthHub directory of licensed services, which anyone can search.
Check 1: is the service licensed, and does the site say so?
MOH publishes the registers and tells the public to use them. Its enforcement page states that "Members of the public are encouraged to use the following resources to verify if a healthcare service provider or professional is licensed or registered respectively when seeking healthcare services", and lists the HealthHub licensed-services directory alongside the professional registers (MOH).
There is also something you can check without leaving the website you are already on. The outpatient regulations require a licensee's website or application to conspicuously display its business name, a contact email address or telephone number, "the fact that the licensee is approved to provide an outpatient medical service by remote provision", and a statement about life-saving measures (OMS Regulations). Those are specific, named items. If you cannot find them, that is a question to ask rather than a conclusion to draw — but it is a fair question, and a licensed provider will have an answer.
Check 2: is the doctor on the register?
The Singapore Medical Council maintains a public register of medical practitioners, linked from MOH's own enforcement page (MOH). A named doctor takes a minute to look up.
This matters because of how a prescription is defined. Under the therapeutic products regulations, a prescription is valid only if it is written and signed by a "qualified practitioner", and the same instrument defines that as a registered medical practitioner under the Medical Registration Act 1997 (Therapeutic Products Regulations). Registration is not a credential detail; it is the thing that makes the prescription a prescription.
MOH's watchlist also records people convicted of practising without registration — at the time of checking, eight named persons convicted between April 2024 and May 2025, including convictions relating to unauthorised dental veneers and aesthetic injections (MOH). Read it the right way round, though. It records actions that have been taken. Absence from it proves nothing, and presence on it proves only what the entry says. The registers are the positive check.
Check 3: does a real-time video consultation happen on a first visit?
This is the check that is easiest to run and hardest to fudge, because you can simply ask.
A licensee "must not provide an outpatient medical service by remote provision to a first-time patient" unless the service is provided "through real-time 2-way interactive audiovisual communications" — with a first-time patient defined as one who has not previously received a service from that licensee (OMS Regulations).
The joint MOH, HSA and SMC circular puts the same requirement in working language and adds the boundary that matters here: "A real-time video consultation is conducted for first-time patients to first establish the doctor-patient relationship", and "Teleconsultations must not be provided solely by way of self-service, text-only questions", with medicines not to be prescribed "just by getting a patient to fill-up a questionnaire" (Circular 87/2024).
The same circular lists GLP-1 injections, alongside inhalers and insulin, among the examples of medicines a licensee's own written guidelines must address — because they are medicines a patient has to be taught to use (Circular 87/2024). That is a duty on the provider to hold a considered protocol, and it is fair to ask whether one exists.
What the consultation itself is required to include
The regulations describe the encounter itself in some detail, so there is a further set of things you can check against your own experience rather than against a register.
Before providing any service by remote provision, a licensee must ascertain the patient's identity, contact information and location; inform the patient that essential life-saving measures should not be sought remotely; and inform the patient of the identity of the personnel providing the service and their role or designation. The video consultation itself must be real-time and two-way, held "in a place that is closed and private", with sufficient lighting and equipment, and with the patient having a full view of the practitioner's face (OMS Regulations).
Those are things you experience rather than look up. Being asked to confirm who you are and where you are, being told who is on the call and what their role is, and seeing the person you are speaking to are all specified requirements rather than courtesies. So is the next one: where a practitioner is of the opinion that a patient needs treatment, care or a physical examination that cannot be carried out remotely, the licensee must make alternative arrangements and inform the patient (OMS Regulations). Asking how that referral works in practice, and who arranges it, is a fair question with a specific answer.
Check 4: is the product on HSA's register?
HSA publishes a register of every therapeutic product approved for sale in Singapore. Every registered semaglutide and tirzepatide product on it carries the classification Prescription Only (HSA register).
MOH has stated the consequence in Parliament: these medicines "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).
Supply outside that framework carries stated penalties. Supplying an unregistered health product attracts a fine of up to $50,000 or up to two years' imprisonment; supplying an adulterated, counterfeit or tampered product attracts up to $100,000 or three years (Health Products Act).
Asking which registered product you will be dispensed is therefore a concrete question with a checkable answer, and it is the subject of GLP-1 medication in Singapore: what is legal and licensed.
What the enforcement data actually shows
Two numbers, and they are routinely quoted the wrong way round.
In 2024 HSA seized 970,707 units of illegal health products through ground operations and removed 7,351 listings from local e-commerce and social media platforms. Of the physical seizures, codeine cough syrup made up 54%, sexual enhancement medicines 19%, sedatives 18% and other prescription medicines 9%. Of the listings removed, 37% were products marketing aesthetic enhancement of skin and hair, and 5% were weight-loss products (HSA 2025).
The 5% is a share of listings removed online, not of units seized. Weight-loss products were not separately quantified in the ground-seizure breakdown at all. Anyone reporting that weight-loss products were 5% of what HSA seized has combined two different figures.
Separately, HSA has published findings on named products sold online here. One was found to contain sibutramine, "previously a prescription only weight loss medicine used in the treatment of obesity", disallowed for sale in Singapore since 2010 because of increased risk of heart attacks and strokes; a companion product contained a laxative; another named product was found to contain undeclared diclofenac and phenolphthalein (HSA 2026). What those cases have in common is that the contents were identified in a laboratory rather than by the buyer. We cover that further in compounded semaglutide and Telegram sellers.
What the advertising rules require of every licensee, including us
You can check a provider's own pages against the rules, because the rules are published.
Regulation 5 of the Healthcare Services (Advertisement) Regulations 2021 requires that the information in an advertisement "must be factually accurate and capable of being substantiated" and "must not be exaggerated, false, misleading or deceptive". It prohibits any photograph, picture, video or film showing an individual's appearance before and after, or only after, treatment. It prohibits "any laudatory statement (including a statement of prominence or uniqueness) or superlative". It prohibits reviews, testimonials and endorsements. And it prohibits content that implies a licensee can obtain results other licensees cannot, or that compares, contrasts or deprecates another licensee's service (Advertisement Regulations).
The joint circular adds the medicines side: "Advertisements of prescription-only medicines... are not allowed", including "the use of acronyms, misspellings, creative naming or product images with masked identifiers that indirectly refers to" one; advertisements of off-label indications are not allowed; and educational information "shall not refer to brands, include pictorial images of products, make brand comparisons, or mention pricing" (Circular 87/2024).
Those rules bind every licensee here, including us, and they are checkable against whatever page you are looking at. Before-and-after imagery, patient testimonials, endorsements and claims of prominence or uniqueness are named prohibitions rather than matters of taste, and so is any suggestion that one licensee obtains results another cannot. The regulations expect a healthcare page to be substantiable and plain, and that is an expectation a reader can apply directly.
What the registers cannot tell you
Whether the programme around the medicine does anything about muscle.
No register answers that, because it sits outside what licensing measures — and it is the thing that most changes what you are left holding at the end. Substantial weight loss costs lean mass whoever prescribes it, and protein and resistance training are the modifiable part. The specific questions worth asking any provider — including what is in the price, who makes dose decisions, and what the plan is for coming off — are set out in how to choose a GLP-1 clinic: nine questions to ask.
At GetLean, our philosophy is that the medication is the catalyst and what you keep is the result. The four checks above tell you whether a provider is operating inside the framework. The questions in that article tell you what they are actually going to do.
This article describes the position as verified against primary sources in August 2026. Registers and enforcement figures change; check the current position before acting on anything here.
Common questions
How do you check whether a weight-loss provider is licensed in Singapore?
MOH directs the public to two registers: the HealthHub directory of licensed services, and the Singapore Medical Council register of doctors (MOH). Both are free and take a minute each.
What must a telemedicine provider display on its website?
Its business name, a contact email or telephone number, the fact that it is approved to provide the service by remote provision, and a statement about life-saving measures (OMS Regulations). Those details are visible before you pay anything.
Is it normal to get a prescription without a video call?
Not for a first visit. The regulations prohibit remote provision to a first-time patient unless it is by real-time two-way audiovisual communication (OMS Regulations), and the joint circular states that medicines should not be prescribed just by getting a patient to fill up a questionnaire (Circular 87/2024).
How much of HSA's enforcement involves weight-loss products?
In 2024 HSA seized 970,707 units of illegal health products and removed 7,351 online listings, and weight-loss products made up 5% of the listings removed (HSA 2025). That 5% is a share of listings taken down, not of units seized.
Does a provider being absent from MOH's watchlist mean it is safe?
No. The watchlist records enforcement actions that have been taken; absence from it proves nothing either way (MOH). The registers are the positive check — they tell you whether a service is licensed and a doctor registered.