By Mary Kangley 
In November 2019, CREATION Pinpoint® identified 8,662 healthcare professional (HCP) authored tweets from 4,648 individual HCPs, mentioning a top 50 pharmaceutical company (according to revenue).
November’s Top 50 pharmaceutical companies mentioned by HCPs on Twitter
| Top 50 rank | Company | Total Mentions | Account mentions | Account retweets | Number of Twitter accounts mentioned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Johnson & Johnson* | 1,452 | 749 | 134 | 23 |
| 2 | Novartis | 798 | 471 | 54 | 15 |
| 3 | Sanofi | 689 | 610 | 83 | 20 |
| 4 | GSK | 653 | 300 | 49 | 8 |
| 5 | Gilead | 587 | 138 | 1 | 2 |
| 6 | Roche | 508 | 152 | 21 | 7 |
| 7 | Pfizer | 494 | 353 | 26 | 15 |
| 8 | Bayer | 489 | 164 | 10 | 8 |
| 9 | Merck & co | 460 | 165 | 5 | 4 |
| 10 | Takeda | 364 | 109 | 8 | 4 |
| 11 | AstraZeneca | 333 | 277 | 25 | 8 |
| 12 | Novo Nordisk | 304 | 242 | 23 | 7 |
| 13 | Amgen | 226 | 157 | 21 | 9 |
| 14 | Lilly | 209 | 118 | 0 | 5 |
| 15 | AbbVie | 184 | 77 | 5 | 8 |
| 16 | Abbott | 175 | 197 | 4 | 3 |
| 17 | Boehringer | 152 | 110 | 7 | 8 |
| 18 | Teva | 132 | 57 | 1 | 6 |
| 19 | Biogen | 124 | 43 | 3 | 2 |
| 20 | BMS | 111 | 116 | 5 | 5 |
| 21 | Vertex | 97 | 96 | 1 | 1 |
| 22 | Allergan | 91 | 16 | 3 | 1 |
| 23 | UCB | 81 | 16 | 12 | 3 |
| 24 | Celgene | 81 | 39 | 2 | 2 |
| 25 | Merck KGaA | 80 | 73 | 16 | 7 |
| 26 | Servier | 69 | 21 | 1 | 1 |
| 27 | Mylan | 67 | 20 | 3 | 3 |
| 28 | Ipsen | 59 | 53 | 6 | 2 |
| 29 | Fresenius | 55 | 16 | 2 | 3 |
| 30 | Astellas | 47 | 33 | 0 | 3 |
| 31 | Regenero | 44 | 16 | 0 | 1 |
| 32 | Otsuka | 44 | 24 | 0 | 2 |
| 33 | CSL | 39 | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| 34 | Bausch | 26 | 14 | 0 | 1 |
| 35 | Daiichi-Sankyo | 24 | 5 | 0 | 2 |
| 36 | Mallinckrodt | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 37 | Eisai | 17 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 38 | Sun | 10 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| 39 | Ferring | 10 | 10 | 1 | 1 |
| 40 | Alexion | 10 | 9 | 0 | 1 |
| 41 | Menarini | 8 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| 42 | Grifols | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 43 | Stada arzneimittel | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 44 | Shire** | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 45 | Jiangsu hengrui | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 46 | Chugai | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | Endo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | Mitsubishi tanabe pharma | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | Sumitomo dainippon | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | Sino | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The five pharmaceutical companies that were mentioned the most were Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Novartis, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Gilead. Gilead is new to the top of this list, but J&J, Novartis, Sanofi and GSK have steadily held their top positions for multiple months of tracking.
Gilead was mentioned as their CEO was asked about the international price discrepancies of Truvada for PrEP and the company was sued over HIV drug prices. A tweet by Public Citizen addressing this was the most retweeted by HCPs in the month.
.@AOC to Gilead CEO: The list price [for Truvada for PrEP] is almost $2,000 in the US. Why is it $8 in Australia? pic.twitter.com/9dTfCliX3L
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) November 7, 2019
The top three shared links by HCPs this month were in response to a positive data release and approval of key new vaccines, and a carer advocacy initiative.
- NEJM data release of primary efficacy data for Takeda’s dengue vaccine (82 tweets).
- News shared of Merck & Co’s Ebola vaccine European approval (64 tweets).
- Merck KGaA’s Embracing Carers initiative, from their Spanish site (61 tweets).
Whilst @AstraZeneca has been at the top of the list of most mentioned corporate accounts in previous months, @Novartis and @JNJnursing are seeing these ranks for the first time since we began this tracking in August. Drivers for this includes Novartis buying The Medicines Company and for @JNJnursing the online campaign #NurseHackathon, an event partially sponsored by J&J.
HCP MENTIONS OF COMPANY TWITTER ACCOUNTS
| Company account | Account mentions |
|---|---|
| @Novartis | 209 |
| @AstraZeneca | 195 |
| @JNJnursing | 178 |
HCP mentions of top 50 pharmaceutical companies will be tracked monthly to observe how the rankings change over time. You can keep up to date with this and other pharmaceutical tracking including FDA and EMA drug approvals, within the Tracking section of CREATION Knowledge. For these updates straight to your inbox, you can sign up to our monthly eJournal.
Methodology notes:
- Data for this research was analysed from the online Twitter conversations of HCPs in all languages mentioning a Top 50 pharmaceutical company between November 1st and November 30th 2019.
- Unless otherwise specified, mentions of a company are not limited to its Twitter account(s).
- In some cases, a tweet may mention more than one company account (eg. @abbottnews and @abbottglobal) – this only counts as one Company Mention but two Account Mentions.
The Number of Twitter Accounts Mentioned only include those accounts mentioned by HCPs.
