Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital say that online restaurant reviews posted on the website Yelp can serve as an indicator of food poisoning outbreaks, and point specifically to critical data that can help isolate and stop the spread of bacterial stomach bugs. Such information can assist public health departments who routinely inspect restaurants to make sure they’re working up to health codes.
Last year, the New York City health department worked with Yelp and Columbia University to analyze some 294,000 reviews. Now the Big Apple wants to work with Twitter as another source of food poisoning tip-offs.
