ICT helps city dwellers avoid foodborne illness
The other day I learned the hard way about an app in development that tracks tweets to identify which city restaurants might be the likely source of a foodborne illness. I wish I had known about it earlier.
Recently, my family and I were hit by the unmerciful force of food poisoning while on a city vacation. After we had recovered and talked to locals about where we had eaten, we were told that ours’ was no restaurant at all. It was hard to disagree, as the whole family had been flat out for about 24 hours after eating at said establishment.
The unfortunate fact is that we are not alone. According to the European Food Safety Authority, there are 320,000 cases of foodborne illness reported each year in the European Union (EU), although the true number is likely much, much higher. The US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans, or 48 million people, gets sick from a foodborne disease.
To my understanding, the system behind the disease-tracking app is an analysis of geo-tagged tweets which single out content connected to a foodborne illness. It analyses tweets from people up to 72 hours after being tagged at a known restaurant location. If there are tweets about food poisoning, it traces them back to where the person had been eating. Now this app covers New York City, but it’s not hard to image how useful this could be in other cities.
It is truly remarkable how many ways smartphones and the wisdom of the crowd can and do assist us in our everyday city life. Imagine this app or a similar system being connected to the food safety authorities’, restaurant inspections results, and then linked to other apps such as TripAdvisor or OpenTable – all conveniently available on your smartphone. Perhaps this could have saved us from ruining a nice day out in the city?
Written by Monika Bylehn
In addition to a background in the finance industry and the government sector, Byléhn has more than 10 years’ experience in the telecom industry. Today, her work focuses on the Networked Society, and she is responsible for establishing a position of thought leadership for Ericsson on the issue of urban life.
