MedCityNews – “Why should Twitter care about healthcare, other than the obvious reason that it’s a $3 trillion industry just in the U.S.? Because consumers care about the kind of influence, support and resources that social media can uncover, according to Craig Hashi, one of two Twitter engineers dedicated to healthcare. Speaking Sunday at the Cleveland Clinic’s sixth annual Patient Experience: Empathy + Innovation Summit, Hashi cited some interesting statistics from a variety of sources. Some 40 percent of consumers believe that information they found on social media affects how they deal with their health, he said. A quarter of Internet users with chronic illnesses look for people with similar health issues. And 42 percent search online for reviews of health products, treatments and providers. The volume of information available on Twitter is staggering, Hashi said. There are half a billion tweets send every day. There will be more words on Twitter in the next two years than in all books ever printed. An analysis Hashi put together found that there were 44 million cancer-related tweets in the 12 months ending in March 2015, and traffic spiked in October, which happens to be Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The combination of social media and mobility are changing how people consume information, and healthcare marketers should take notice, Hashi said.”