A new app is allowing Chicago health officials to tap into a new data source to help find the source of foodborne illnesses — Twitter.
"We know that the majority of cases of foodborne outbreaks really never end up getting reported to the local health department anywhere in the country," Bechara Choucair, MD, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Health, told Reuters. "We realize the people might not pick up the phone and call the doctor, but they might go to Twitter and complain to the world that they got food poisoning from eating out."
The department's new app uses an algorithm to find tweets likely about a food poisoning incident in Chicago. A staffer then reviews the tweet and reaches out to the user to submit an official notice to the health department, if appropriate.
Between March 2013 and January 2014, the algorithm flagged 2,241 tweets that were possibly about food poisoning in the city. Staffers identified 270 tweets that were most likely about food poisoning, and 193 complaints were submitted to the health department. The complaints resulted in 133 restaurant inspections, leading to the closure of 21 restaurants, according to a report in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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