Previously Unreported Foodborne Illnesses Come To Light Through Social Media
By Laurel Maloy, contributing writer, Food Online
A chance discovery leads to a comprehensive study and subsequent software program designed to scan social media posts for keywords associated with foodborne illnesses
While investigating incidences of gastrointestinal illnesses allegedly connected to a New York City restaurant in 2012, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) noticed a trend. Sick patrons, though not reporting the illness to DOHMH, were mentioning it on Yelp, a popular restaurant review site. As a result, the NYC DOHMH teamed up with Columbia University and Yelp, developing a program able to scan Yelp reviews for keywords associated with foodborne illnesses.
From July 1, 2012 through March 31, 2013, 294,000 Yelp reviews were scanned by the program. More than 890 of those reviews indicated nearly 500 possible incidents of foodborne illness, or restaurant patrons reporting vomiting and/or diarrhea shortly after their meal. Of those reviews, 468 reported illness within four weeks of their visit or did not provide a time period. Only three percent of those 468 had been reported to DOHMH through telephone calls or online systems for the same time frame.
Upon closer examination, DOHMH determined 129 of those cases required further review, with workers calling patrons for a telephone interview. Of those 129 cases, only 27 agreed to the interview, but resulted in another three restaurants linked to 16 illnesses meeting DOHMH’s criteria for onsite investigation. The onsite environmental investigation discovered multiple food handling violations in those three establishments. The study’s entire results can be found here. Now, the question to ask is, “Can this process’ time and resource consumption be a fit for major cities?”
Chicago has engaged in a pilot program, the Chicago Department of Public Health teaming up with the Smart Chicago Collaborative. The Smart Chicago Collaborative touts itself as “a civic organization devoted to improving lives in Chicago through technology.” The direct result of the realization that not everyone has internet access, combined with the fact that the Internet is a central place for people to connect and gather information, was the impetus for a 72-page report published in May 2007. Chicago uses Twitter and the Foodborne Chicago website to identify and contact people who post about foodborne illness. Since its inception in March of 2013, the system’s software has identified 2,918 tweets mentioning symptoms indicative of foodborne illnesses. This program has generated 150 additional food-service and restaurant inspections and 174 full-fledged investigations in its first year.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that even though they are able to link about 48 million symptomatic reports a year to foodborne illness, cases of foodborne illness are widely underreported. In 2013, 80 deaths were reported, though some years have resulted in close to 3,000 deaths. The CDC acknowledges the value of social media and suggests this new information may be one more tool to capturing data and identifying outbreaks more quickly. The CDC suggests that people are “more likely to post a restaurant review online than to contact a health department.” New York City and Chicago are two shining examples of the way technology is continuing to improve food safety and the lives of American consumers.