If any part of your life includes trying to figure out how to work smarter with the FDA, this is for you.  Here’s our list of the top 40 31 online destinations on the FDA and some of the key industries it regulates.   We applied only one criteria to make it on this list:  free, up-to-date, and valuable content.

Blogs and websites exclusively covering the FDA

  1. EyeonFDA – Does this guy ever sleep?  Written by Mark Senak, this blog is updated multiple times a week and focuses on the approval and marketing of new drugs.  Read his infamous quarterly summaries of warning letters.
  2. FDA Lawyers Blog – A tagteam effort by some of the lawyers at FLH, they provide daily coverage of various legal matters concerns the FDA.  Interesting read: India’s going to start inspecting overseas manufacturing sites, too.
  3. Assurx Blog – If your day job involves compliance, risk, or quality, these folks got you covered.  Recent fav: their 2011 forecast for the FDA.
  4. FDA Law Blog – Yes, another tagteam effort by lawyers at HPM.  Nice FDA legislation tracker in the sidebar.
  5. FDA Voice – Yes, the FDA itself is really trying to open up and this blog is a central part of it.  Updated roughly once a week, you’ll get the typical press releases but also some sincere requests for comment.
  6. MedPageToday’s FDA page – This page is really easy to scan once every few weeks to make sure you didn’t miss any big news.
  7. FDAzilla – Surprise!  Yes, we’re mentioning ourselves.  We’re proud of the fact that we’ve taken huge FDA databases, put them online, and made them much more usable and searchable.  Check out FDA employees and 483s.   And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Pharma / Biotech Blogs and Websites

  1. FiercePharma and FierceBiotech – Great industry coverage via their website and a free email newsletter.  These guys are on top of things.  I see more and more news organizations and blogs linking to here.
  2. PharmaLot – Informal tone +  personality + the seriousness of issue coverage = great & rare combo.
  3. The QA Pharm – An executive consultant in the pharma industry shares on his insights with zip and humor.  You can tell that he just loves to write.
  4. Pharm Exec Blog – Coverage on global pharma topics, especially across the pond in the EU. This one was fun: what keeps the C-suiters up at night?
  5. AZ Health Connections – Blog sponsored by AstraZeneca.  If anything, it’s interesting to see where they take this as we all wait for more social media guidance from the FDA.
  6. Pharma Marketing – With a sense of humor and good reporting, John Mack covers all things marketing in Pharma, including this recent post of the 10 Most Important, Awesome Pharma Highlights of 2010
  7. Pharma Manufacturing – Usually these trade publications are overly stuffy, but this one ain’t, as evidenced by their new funny pharm segment.
  8. In the Pipeline – Derek Lowe, PhD (in organic chem!) has been blogging for 9 years (which is about 75 years in blog years) on drug discovery and the pharma industry.
  9. Coreynahman.com – A nice running list of curated items around pharma –  about 5-10 new items/day.  The site is getting around 50,000 visitors/month.  Worth a quick scan to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
  10. PharmaLive (FDA tagged) – another good newsfeed around pharma related to the FDA.

Medical Device Blogs and Websites

  1. MassDevice – Though there’s a slight emphasis on the New England region, this is a great resource for the latest on devices.  They’ve also got several blogs that go more in-depth on such topics as compliance, marketing, and exports.  A breath of fresh air in the industry.
  2. FierceMedicalDevices – Free, weekly newsletter that goes out to 10,000+ people in the medical device and diagnostics industry.  Recent hit: industry reacts to 510k reform ideas.
  3. Drug and Device Law – Lawyers from Dechert offer their personal perspectives on all things associated with product litigation.  What I like about this best is their ruthless and systematic dissection of rulings and legal decisions, like this one related to KV pharmaceuticals.
  4. Medgadget – More for fun than for work, Medgadget covers all kinds of medical devices and emerging medical technologies from a consumer/business perspective.

Food Industry

  1. Food Safety News – This is the only one I go to.  Know of any other good ones?

Groups, Social Networks, and Facebook Pages Related to the FDA

  1. CafePharma – A social network for pharma sales folks.  Should’ve called the site phacebook (sorry, couldn’t resist).  In all seriousness, this site gets hundreds of thousands of views/month.  Recent: sales rep asks for advice when boss moves in 3 houses down and embarrassed to be in pharma.
  2. FDA on Facebook – It’s now up past 3,800 fans, and is growing 120 new fans every week.
  3. FDA Inspections Linkedin Group – My sense for a lot of LinkedIn groups is that everyone joins them all and posts the same links to all the groups they’re a part of.  This one actually stays on topic, is relatively spam-free, and has lots of good links and resources.

Twitter and the FDA

    1. FDA Tweets – The FDA has created 8 distinct twitter accounts – this is an aggregation (via a twitter list) of them all.
    2. Pharma Company Tweets – Curated by EyeonFDA.  As more and more pharma companies realize they need to do more than dip their toe in social media, this will be an interesting, rapidly evolving feed to watch.
    3. @GCPWorks – Tina Avanzato Chiodo, former compliance exec of ImClone, tweets all about compliance and clinical good practices. Very focused and insightful.
    4. @RAPSorg – Yes, the official twitter account for the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society.  There’s no 1 twitter account that I retweet more than them.
    5. @eyeonFDA – Apparently when Mark Senak is not blogging about drug approval & marketing, he’s tweeting.
    6. FDAzilla’s Favorites – Most of the folks on this list aren’t on twitter yet.  The ones that are I’ve compiled into a twitter list called Working Smarter with the FDA.

One more for fun: What did the FDA website look like back in 1996?  Check out it’s evolution on the wayback machine.

Learn more about how FDAzilla can help you achieve your quality and inspection preparation goals: get 483s, Inspector Profiles, Enforcement Analytics, and GMP Regulatory Intelligence. Contact me if you ever have questions at [email protected].