By Mary Kangley 
Discover what healthcare professionals (HCPs) think about pharmaceutical products and their manufacturers, as it happens, through CREATION.co’s tracking updates. How are HCPs responding to drug launch news? How are HCPs talking about or engaging with the Top 50 pharma companies on social media? Each week CREATION.co’s tracking updates bring you the latest insights from the conversation of HCPs across the globe discussing these topics and more.
August’s Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies mentioned by HCPs on Twitter
| Septmeber Rank | August Rank | Company Name | Total Mentions | Account mentions | Account retweets | Number of accounts mentioned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | AstraZeneca | 5,889 | 1,085 | 32 | 9 |
| 2 | 4 | Pfizer | 2,480 | 984 | 105 | 11 |
| 3 | 3 | Johnson & Johnson | 2,274 | 1,125 | 248 | 16 |
| 4 | 6 | GSK | 1,246 | 418 | 100 | 9 |
| 5 | 8 | Sanofi | 820 | 450 | 178 | 14 |
| 6 | 7 | Roche | 692 | 198 | 71 | 3 |
| 7 | 2 | Gilead | 617 | 97 | 12 | 2 |
| 8 | 16 | Lilly | 542 | 193 | 18 | 4 |
| 9 | 9 | AbbVie | 502 | 442 | 54 | 6 |
| 10 | 10 | Novartis | 469 | 323 | 55 | 12 |
| 11 | 5 | Bayer | 427 | 97 | 4 | 3 |
| 12 | 12 | Merck & co | 321 | 203 | 26 | 5 |
| 13 | 15 | Novo Nordisk | 256 | 227 | 64 | 6 |
| 14 | 17 | Boehringer | 248 | 216 | 44 | 8 |
| 15 | 20 | Regeneron | 192 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 16 | 11 | Abbott | 182 | 184 | 9 | 3 |
| 17 | 18 | BMS | 144 | 98 | 21 | 2 |
| 18 | 14 | Otsuka | 142 | 11 | 0 | 1 |
| 19 | 21 | Amgen | 130 | 102 | 18 | 5 |
| 20 | 19 | Teva | 104 | 31 | 14 | 3 |
| 21 | 26 | Fresenius | 79 | 60 | 27 | 3 |
| 22 | 13 | Biogen | 66 | 31 | 12 | 1 |
| 23 | 22 | Takeda | 59 | 47 | 21 | 3 |
| 24 | 38 | Astellas | 59 | 41 | 3 | 4 |
| 25 | 25 | Mylan | 53 | 10 | 5 | 1 |
| 26 | 24 | Merck KGaA | 51 | 33 | 11 | 4 |
| 27 | 40 | Ipsen | 47 | 42 | 15 | 1 |
| 28 | 27 | Allergan | 46 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 29 | 29 | Grifols | 34 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 30 | 37 | UCB | 33 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
| 31 | 34 | Servier | 31 | 7 | 3 | 1 |
| 32 | 35 | Daiichi-Sankyo | 29 | 5 | 2 | 2 |
| 33 | 31 | Vertex | 28 | 28 | 0 | 1 |
| 34 | 23 | Bausch | 26 | 6 | 0 | 1 |
| 35 | 28 | Eisai | 26 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 36 | 32 | CSL | 24 | 22 | 1 | 2 |
| 37 | 30 | Chugai | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 38 | 36 | Sun | 17 | 9 | 0 | 1 |
| 39 | 33 | Menarini | 14 | 8 | 3 | 1 |
| 40 | 39 | Alexion | 9 | 8 | 0 | 2 |
| 41 | 38 | Aurobindo | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 42 | 41 | Mitsubishi tanabe pharma | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 43 | 43 | Sumitomo dainippon | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 42 | Endo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Meiji | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Yunnan baiyao | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Ono | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Shanghai | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Jiangsu hengrui | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Sino | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
August’s insights from HCPs mentioning Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies
The five pharmaceutical companies that were mentioned the most by HCPs on Twitter during August 2020 were AstraZeneca, Gilead, Johnson and Johnson (J&J), Pfizer, and Abbott.
After 5 months at the top of this list, Gilead was displaced by AstraZeneca as the most mentioned top 50 pharmaceutical company by HCPs online, largely as a result of discussions about AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate in collaboration with the University of Oxford. This was an international conversation as Mexico and Argentina were announced as two of the countries to produce the vaccine.
El anuncio de esta mañana entre la Fundacion Slim, Astra-Zeneca, Liomnt, Mexico y Argentina. Da una gran esperanza para obtener vacuna a principios de 2021. Pero de igual importancia, subraya el role de la iniciativa privada en innovación y equidad. Gran Noticia.
— Guillermo Torre (@GTorreAmione) August 13, 2020
Despite this, the price of Gilead’s COVID-19 treatment, remdesivir, remained a controversial hot topic among HCPs online.
📍HIGHWAY ROBBERY:
Remdesivir, made by @GileadSciences, has now set the price ➡️ $2,300 to $3,100 per patient.
So how much does it cost to produce each vial?
➡️ Just $1.
US taxpayers also had paid for the drug’s NIH trial.
Borderline criminal drug pricing.#COVID19 pic.twitter.com/bgd06By0cL
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) August 6, 2020
The share of conversation covering COVID-19 declined by 10% from last month, down to 33% of the overall monthly volume. Outside of the virus conversation, key stories arose in the multiple myeloma (MM) space as GSK’s MM treatment, BLENREP, was approved by the FDA and positive results from Janssen’s GRIFFIN trial for newly diagnosed MM were released. One HCP in the US celebrated the daratumumab combination as her new standard of care.
FDA approves GSK’s BLENREP (belantamab mafodotin-blmf) for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma #mmsm @theMMRF @IMFmyeloma https://t.co/WXiL6XfkCL
— Saad Z. Usmani MD MBA FACP 🇺🇸🇵🇰 (@szusmani) August 6, 2020
GRIFFIN trial is published @BloodJournal. Dara-RVD significantly better than RVD, CR 80 vs 61%, MRDneg 51 vs 20.4%. Well tolerated and no problems with stem cell collection. My new SOC👏congrats @PlasmaCellPete et al., @JanssenOncUS #mmsm #bmtsmhttps://t.co/c2qxBNnvCX pic.twitter.com/CwA5cvtqXG
— Suzanne Lentzsch, MD, PhD (@SLentzsch) August 21, 2020
Emerging as the 5th most mentioned pharmaceutical company by HCPs this month, the news around Abbott’s COVID-19 rapid antigen test receiving emergency-use FDA authorisation surfaced in two of the most shared external links:
- Abbott press release of FDA emergency-use authorisation for rapid antigen test and ramping production.
- Report of Biogen conference likely causing 20,000 COVID-19 cases in the Boston area.
- News article on Abbott’s rapid test emergency authorisation.
CREATION.co continues to analyse online HCP conversation on a variety of topics including virtual congress, healthcare changes since the pandemic, product development and therapy area specific insights.
To stay up to date, you can sign up to CREATION.co’s monthly eJournal.
- In August 2020, CREATION Pinpoint® identified 10,945 healthcare professional (HCP) authored tweets from 5,882 individual HCPs mentioning a top-50 pharmaceutical company (according to revenue).
- Data for this research was analysed from the online Twitter conversations of HCPs in all languages mentioning a Top 50 pharmaceutical company between August 1st and August 31st 2020.
- 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.
- Johnson & Johnson was included as a whole, encompassing its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Janssen. In August, 598 of these posts mentioned Janssen.
