The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics worked up a methodology for assessing the effectiveness of pharma’s social media efforts across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, according to three indices: reach (total number of people reached through each channel via likes, shares and re-tweets); relevance (extent to which content is being shared and forwarded); and relationship (amount of back and forth between company and patient).

Those pharmas hitting the trifecta scored best on the cumulative “Social Media Engagement Index.” Results were tallied over a two-year period. Here are the top ten pharma engagers, per IMS Health. To read the full report, which discusses the role of Wikipedia, healthcare professionals’ use of social media, and a summary of social media regulatory policy in the US, Canada and the EU, click here. And the winners are:

IMS Health Social Engagement Index

1. Johnson & Johnson

2. GlaxoSmithKline

3.Novo Nordisk

4. Pfizer

5. Novartis

6. Boehringer Ingelheim

7. Bayer

8. Merck

9. AstraZeneca

10. UCB

In a separate article, consultants at Capgemini Consulting Life Sciences wonder if social media in pharma has reached a tipping point. PharmExec’s sibling company, CBI, is hosting its annualiPharma conference in New York City this May.