Discovering foodborne illness in online restaurant reviews.

Objective: We developed a system for the discovery of foodborne illness mentioned in online Yelp restaurant reviews using text classification. The system is used by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) to monitor Yelp for foodborne illness complaints.

Materials And Methods: We built classifiers for 2 tasks: (1) determining if a review indicated a person experiencing foodborne illness and (2) determining if a review indicated multiple people experiencing foodborne illness.

Using online reviews by restaurant patrons to identify unreported cases of foodborne illness - New York City, 2012-2013.

While investigating an outbreak of gastrointestinal disease associated with a restaurant, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) noted that patrons had reported illnesses on the business review website Yelp (http://www.yelp.com) that had not been reported to DOHMH.