NYC Health Department Will Use Yelp To Track Food Poisoning Problems

Yelp - an online review website that contains information and reviews about business and venues around us will now be used by NYC health department and mental hygiene to track food poisoning outbreaks in the city. Yelp New York contains a vast database of business and venues present in the city which includes Restaurants, Shopping centers, Nightlife , Health and medical, Automotive, Home services, Local services and much more. Yelp restaurants are often searched by people when they are heading towards a new restaurant to read customers reviews about the restaurant. Some people mostly rely on Yelp reviews to decide which restaurants to go for dinner. People who goes dining out in a restaurant often post reviews about the restaurant which becomes a helping tool for other diners.

In New York City people usually go out for dinner in different restaurants and venues where NYC health department makes sure that restaurants and the food is safe. According to the report released by the centers of Disease control and prevention, Health department of NYC is developing a pilot program which will use Yelp reviews to catch food poisoning illness in the city. The idea of using Yelp reviews came into action when health department saw a wide use of Yelp reviews by people before selecting the best restaurant to dine out.

NYC Health Department reached to Yelp and asked the favor to help in investigating food poisoning problems in NYC through reviews. Yelp agreed upon that and sent weekly roundups to the health department for nine months. Pilot software developed by the students of Columbia University investigated 300,000 reviews from Yelp New York and found 16 illness based on the food they took last 12 - 16 hours before. The officials narrowed down the search and look for words like , "Sick" , "Vomit", "Diarrhea" and found results that helped them track the food poisoning outbreaks in the city.

Investigators send out emails to 129 reviewers in which only 29 agreed for the interview. When health department officials investigated those 16 restaurant which caused 16 illnesses, they found food safety violations in food storage place in the restaurants and even signs of mice and roaches in some venues.

Yelp reviews helped NYC Health Department at a vast scale to track food poisoning outbreaks in the city and now they are deciding to monitor reviews on daily basis instead of weekly basis to find more quality results and even trying to reach out social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.