Online Reports of Foodborne Illness Capture Foods Implicated in Official Foodborne Outbreak Reports

Traditional surveillance systems only capture a fraction of the estimated 48 million yearly cases of foodborne illness in the United States due to few affected individuals seeking medical care and lack of reporting to appropriate authorities. Non-traditional disease surveillance approaches could be used to supplement foodborne illness surveillance systems.

Objective

We assessed whether foodservice reviews on Yelp.com (a business review site) can be used to support foodborne illness surveillance efforts.