Using Twitter as an Intelligence Tool: 85 Accounts Worth Following

With the rise of president-elect Donald Trump, it’s become abundantly clear that Twitter matters. And it matters not just for politics. For regulatory affairs folks in in the pharmaceutical and medical device spaces, for investors, and even for the regulators themselves, Twitter is a great place to catch the day’s breaking news before the headlines are written.

(Editor’s Note: This is by no means a complete list and if you’re looking for more than 85 accounts, you’re in luck as the former Focus managing editor, Alec Gaffney (a must-follow on Twitter for anyone in the regulatory space) back in 2014 compiled a more complete list of 460 Twitter accounts worth following.)

Journalists

These are the reliable folks (again, not all-inclusive) who follow the news religiously, break news day in, day out and if there’s something big coming down the pike, you can just about guarantee one of them will have a story on it and it will be accurate (for the sake of brevity I tried to only include one journalist from each outlet and the list is in no particular order).

1. Ben Hirschler, Reuters, covers all things pharmaceuticals, health policy and science
2. Matthew Herper, Forbes, covers science and medicine
3. Antonio Regalado, MIT Tech Review, covers science
4. Jacob Plieth, EP Vantage, covers mostly oncology and immunology
5. Carolyn Johnson, Washington Post, covers the business of health
6. Matthew Perrone, AP, covers health and FDA
7. Jonathan Rockoff, Wall Street Journal, covers pharmaceuticals and biotech
8. Ed Silverman, Stat, covers pharmaceuticals and policy
9. Sarah Karlin-Smith, Politico, covers pharmaceutical policy and FDA
10. Meg Tirrell, CNBC, covers biotech and pharmaceuticals
11. John Caroll, Endpoints, covers biotech and pharmaceuticals
12. Caroline Chen, Bloomberg, covers biotech and health care
13. Alex Lash, Xconomy, national biotech editor
14. Vikas Dandekar, Economic Times, covers pharmaceuticals in India
15. Lisa Jarvis, C&EN, covers biotech and pharmaceuticals
16. Carl Zimmer, New York Times, covers science
17. Christina Farr, Fast Company, covering health technology and medicine
18. Vidya Krishnan, The Hindu, health and science editor
19. Adam Feuerstein, TheStreet, covers biotech and pharmaceutical stocks
20. Steve Usdin, BioCentury, covers the biopharma industry
21. Derrick Gingery, Pink Sheet, covers the biopharma industry
22. Natasha Loder, Economist, covers health care
23. Turna Ray, Genome Web, covers genomics and personalized medicine
24. Kerry Dooley Young, CQ, covers medicine and federal policy
25. Donna Young, S&P Global, covers pharmaceutical and biotech policy
26. Frederik Joelving, Freelance, covers medicine and public health
27. Dan Stanton, BioPharma-Reporter, covers pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing
28. Mark McCarty, Medical Device Daily, covers medical devices
29. Larry Husten, CardioBrief, covers cardiovascular medicine
30. Vibha Sharma, Scrip, senior reporter covering regulatory affairs
31. Stephanie Lee, BuzzFeed, covers health and science technology

Academics and Doctors and Lawyers and Lawyer/Doctor Academics

These are the folks who write and publish journal articles on all things health and pharmaceutical/medical device policy. They are also often quoted in news stories, raising red flags and offering justifiable opinions without turning the conversation into what Twitter all too often becomes: A shouting match with anonymous trolls.

1. Ameet Sarpatwari, instructor at Harvard Medical School
2. Jacob Sherkow, associate professor at New York Law School
3. Scott Gottlieb, physician, former FDA official and AEI fellow
4. Vinay Prasad, assistant professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Sciences University
5. Joseph Ross, primary care physician and health policy researcher at Yale
6. Matthew Herder, associate professor at Dalhousie University
7. Elaine Blais, patent litigator at Goodwin Procter
8. Aaron Kesselheim, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School
9. Hank Greely, Stanford University law professor
10. Eric Topol, Director of Scripps Translational Science Institute
11. Walid Gellad, co-director of the Pittsburgh Center for Pharmaceutical Policy & Prescribing
12. Nicolas Terry, health law professor at Indiana University
13. Rachel Sachs, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis
14. Siddhartha Mukherjee, cancer physician, researcher and author
15. Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering
16. Amitabh Chandra, professor at Harvard Kennedy School
17. Ronald Klain, general counsel at Revolution LLC, former Ebola Czar under President Obama
18. Paul Knoepfler, professor at University of California, Davis
19. Marc-Andre Gagnon, professor at Carleton University
20. Arthur Caplan, professor at NYU Langone Medical Center
21. Austin Frakt, health economist with the Department of Veterans Affairs
22. David Juurlink, physician and drug safety researcher at University of Toronto
23. Ethan Weiss, scientist at UCSF
24. Topher Spiro, VP of health policy at the Center for American Progress
25. Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
26. Atul Gawande, surgeon and writer
27. Timothy Caulfield, professor of health policy and law at University of Alberta
28. Leonid Kruglyak, geneticist and professor at UCLA
29. C. Michael Gibson, professor at Harvard
30. Judit Rius Sanjuan, US manager and legal policy adviser to Doctors Without Borders
31. Duncan Emerton, a physician and biosimilars expert, also known on Twitter as Biosimilarz
32. Paul Howard, senior fellow and director for Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress
33. FDA Law Blog, written by Kurt Karst at the law firm Hyman, Phelps & McNamara

Regulators and Industry and Investors With Fast Fingers

These are the people who either help regulate the pharmaceutical, biotech and device industries, or are intimately involved with such industries on a daily basis (I tried to include those who tweet consistently).

1. Brent Saunders, CEO of Allergan
2. Francis Collins, Director of NIH
3. Andy Slavitt, Acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
4. Derek Lowe, drug discovery chemist and blogger
5. Bruce Booth, early stage biotech venture capital
6. Michael Gilman, scientist and entrepreneur
7. Robert Plenge, VP and head of translational medicine at Merck
8. Ron Cohen, CEO of Acorda Therapeutics and chair of BIO
9. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Gates Foundation
10. Katrine Bosley, CEO of Editas Medicine
11. Cornell Stamoran, Catalent Pharma Solutions
12. Greg Folkers, works at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
13. Robert Wittenberg, pharmaceutical and device advertising, promotion and labeling
14. John Driscoll, regulatory affairs consultant focused on drug promotion
15. Maxim Jacobs, Director of Healthcare Research, North America for Edison Investment
16. Brad Loncar, private biotech investor
17. Zach, anonymous buy-side biotech analyst
18. Eye on FDA, focus on all things FDA
19. Sally Church, scientist and author of the Biotech Strategy Blog
20. Andrew G., founder of BiotechDueDilligence
21. Andy Biotech, anonymous biotech investor