Handy Twitter Lists

Twitter has emerged as one of the most active platforms for pharmaceutical companies and healthcare alike.  All major government agencies working in healthcare are now on Twitter and there are at least 124 pharma and device twitter feeds (certainly more) and they are occasionally ranked here (see TWANK – Pharma Twitter Rankings). Healthcare reporters are also on Twitter.

One of the many handy things about Twitter, other than the fact that it is a tremendous traffic driver for Web sites and other digital properties and other than the fact that it allows for really granular communications to niche audiences, is the fact that it also allows one to handily collect information by category.  Anyone who is a regular user of Twitter, or who has attended a large medical conference, will understand the use of hashtags – that symbol “#” before a term that allows outsiders to follow the symbol and see what everyone at the conference is saying, for example.

Sometimes, however, when there is a whole flock, it helps to pick out a few to whom you want to listen.  Another categorical way to receive information is through the use of Twitter lists.  A Twitter user is able to create a list category and collect the tweets of people in that category in one spot.  In this way, you don’t see what people are saying about a specific topic, like with hashtags, but what certain categories of people are talking about.  To that end, I thought it would be handy to provide you with a few lists that may interest you brought to you by the Eye on FDA Twitter feed.

List of Healthcare Reporters – certainly not a complete and total list of reporters on Twitter in healthcare, but a start.

List of pharmaceutical manufacturers – again not promising utter completeness, but a good start – includes biotech as well.

List of device manufacturers – always looking for more.

List of medical journals on Twitter – please  send along any that have been missed.

List of all the FDA Twitter feeds.

List of government agencies involved in healthcare – CDC, NIH, FDA and more.

List of tweets about pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing industry jobs.

Subscribe to any of these that interest you and from time to time, you can drop in and see what people in these categories are talking about.  It can be particularly useful when a major topic emerges or a high profile event occurs to see what, if anything, is being tweeted.