By Mary Kangley 
February’s Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies mentioned by HCPs on Twitter
| Feb's Top 50 rank | (Jan's Top 50 rank ) | Company | Total Mentions | Account mentions | Account retweets | Number of Twitter accounts mentioned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Johnson & Johnson | 949 | 498 | 135 | 19 |
| 2 | 8 | Sanofi | 591 | 383 | 130 | 14 |
| 3 | 10 | Gilead | 575 | 105 | 6 | 1 |
| 4 | 4 | Novartis | 502 | 333 | 77 | 11 |
| 5 | 2 | GSK | 490 | 176 | 30 | 6 |
| 6 | 5 | Pfizer | 425 | 268 | 71 | 10 |
| 7 | 3 | Merck & co | 423 | 235 | 12 | 2 |
| 8 | 6 | Roche | 412 | 100 | 23 | 3 |
| 9 | 7 | Bayer | 356 | 74 | 2 | 7 |
| 10 | 12 | Lilly | 279 | 141 | 2 | 3 |
| 11 | 9 | AstraZeneca | 188 | 140 | 14 | 7 |
| 12 | 13 | Novo Nordisk | 175 | 148 | 30 | 6 |
| 13 | 20 | Boehringer | 166 | 143 | 30 | 4 |
| 14 | 19 | BMS | 127 | 105 | 10 | 2 |
| 15 | 15 | Takeda | 125 | 93 | 23 | 5 |
| 16 | 14 | Amgen | 120 | 91 | 14 | 6 |
| 17 | 11 | AbbVie | 103 | 39 | 5 | 5 |
| 18 | 16 | Abbott | 96 | 104 | 3 | 3 |
| 19 | 34 | Eisai | 93 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 20 | 21 | Mylan | 92 | 29 | 0 | 1 |
| 21 | 17 | Biogen | 92 | 46 | 15 | 2 |
| 22 | 23 | Allergan | 88 | 35 | 2 | 1 |
| 23 | 18 | Fresenius | 79 | 48 | 13 | 3 |
| 24 | 25 | Merck KGaA | 73 | 61 | 8 | 4 |
| 25 | 36 | UCB | 67 | 23 | 20 | 3 |
| 26 | 28 | Regenero | 56 | 23 | 1 | 1 |
| 27 | 24 | Teva | 42 | 7 | 0 | 4 |
| 28 | 27 | Servier | 40 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| 29 | 22 | Vertex | 39 | 38 | 1 | 1 |
| 30 | 29 | Astellas | 39 | 19 | 3 | 3 |
| 31 | 35 | Ipsen | 28 | 24 | 10 | 2 |
| 32 | 26 | CSL | 24 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| 33 | 50 | Stada arzneimittel | 23 | 14 | 0 | 1 |
| 34 | 43 | Mallinckrodt | 22 | 9 | 5 | 1 |
| 35 | 33 | Bausch | 22 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| 36 | 32 | Daiichi-Sankyo | 21 | 14 | 7 | 3 |
| 37 | 38 | Ferring | 20 | 10 | 2 | 1 |
| 38 | 30 | Otsuka | 15 | 5 | 1 | 3 |
| 39 | 41 | Grifols | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 40 | 42 | Alexion | 13 | 11 | 4 | 1 |
| 41 | 39 | Sun | 13 | 9 | 0 | 1 |
| 42 | 44 | Menarini | 12 | 6 | 6 | 1 |
| 43 | 31 | Celgene | 12 | 5 | 2 | 2 |
| 44 | 50 | Endo | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 45 | 37 | Shire | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 46 | 45 | Sumitomo dainippon | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 47 | 40 | Chugai | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Sino | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Mitsubishi tanabe pharma | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Jiangsu hengrui | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The five pharmaceutical companies that were mentioned the most by HCPs on Twitter in February 2020 were Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Sanofi, Gilead, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Gilead and Sanofi re-entered the top 5 HCP mentioned companies on account of their candidate products for the treatment of COVID19, which were in an experimental phase in February.
Big pharma 💊 fight coming! China company to synthesize the ingredients of remdesivir, Gilead’s drug that is a leading candidate to treat the highly-infectious #COVID19. China will do it without Gilead license & drug isn’t approved anywhere yet either. https://t.co/5CBJbLe3UG
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 12, 2020
As HCPs shared links to information on Twitter, J&J Nursing’s podcast, See You Now, remained from January’s top shared links, due to new episodes being released. A successful trial was shared from a Merck & co press release, but Eisai was mentioned after the FDA asked the company to withdraw its weight-loss drug. When disseminating this information, HCPs added comments highlighting the statistics behind the decision.
💊 @US_FDA calls for manufacturer of #weightloss med Belviq (lorcaserin) to “voluntarily withdraw” from market given various cancer concerns…(withdrawal request submitted by Eisai)
This was based on 12000 pts over 5 yrs, 7.7% vs. 7.1% cancer rate🤔
— Austin Chiang, MD MPH FASGE FACG (@AustinChiangMD) February 14, 2020
The three most shared links by HCPs:
- Eisai asked to withdraw weight-loss drug lorcaserin (Belviq) by the FDA due to cancer risk (30 tweets).
- Merck & Co press release for successful Phase III Keynote-355 for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus chemotherapy in Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (mTNBC) (24 tweets).
- J&J Nursing See You Now podcast (23 tweets).
Check out this new podcast by @ShawnaButlerRN, called "See you Now." It's a storytelling format highlighting the human-centered solutions driven by nurses addressing today's most challenging healthcare problems. Plus it focuses on new #HealthTech. Link: https://t.co/a4GtcVBMrh
— Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS (@BrennanSpiegel) February 5, 2020
HCP MENTIONS OF COMPANY TWITTER ACCOUNTS
| Company account | Account mentions |
|---|---|
| @Merck | 222 |
| @Pfizer | 152 |
| @JNJMedDeviceUKI | 136 |
HCPs celebrated surgeon Ailín Rogers who was the first PROGRESS fellowship recipient, supported by J&J Medical Devices, also noting their support of women in surgery.
Absolutely over the moon to be the first recipient the PROGRESS fellowship. Huge thanks to @RCSI_Irl @JNJMedDeviceUKI for their incredible support of my fellowship in @royalmarsdenNHS in robotic advanced colorectal cancer. #ilooklikeasurgeon https://t.co/IUCFG8ot7R
— Ailín Rogers (@ailsybird) February 14, 2020
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.
READ LAST MONTH’S TOP 50 PHARMA TRACKER:
Top 50 Pharma Tracker: New year begins with failed trials and successful podcast launch
Methodology notes:
- In February 2020, CREATION Pinpoint® identified 6,666 healthcare professionals (HCP) authored tweets from 3,677 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 February 1st and February 29th 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.
- ** Whilst included in the Top 50 Pharma list according to revenue from 2019, Shire has since been acquired by Takeda and no longer holds a Twitter account.
