Does Health Tweeder suck?

Probably. Don't get me wrong, I certainly find it interesting to quantify how often a certain medical indication is being mentioned on twitter, and I also like how the number of tweets is displayed in a snazzy looking petri dish - but so what. I can't really act on the sort of content being published.

Pharma would certainly find it useful to know which diseases are being discussed on twitter, since it can help shape the commercialization strategy for a particular brand, but you need to have it tied to metrics in order for it to have real value. For a particular drug brand, it would be interesting to know how many times it is mentioned, but also what is being mentioned. Are people speaking positively, reporting adverse events, slandering the product, etc.

All this said, the concept underlying Health Tweeder I think will continuously expand. Measuring and quantifying search terms (whether indications, brands, etc.) by way of semantic content filtering in web 2.0 platforms will ultimately have an impact on patient care, but we're not there yet.