When food poisoning makes you Yelp

An interesting study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) has come to light that used social media to track outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. Working with the restaurant-recommendation website Yelp, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) analysed nearly 300,00 reviews searching for terms such as "sick," "vomit," "diarrhea," or "food poisoning". The search began when, during the investigation of an outbreak of gastrointestinal disease associated with a particular restaurant, DOHMH noticed a series of online reviews relating to such illnesses that had not been officially reported. There followed analysis of some 294,000 reviews posted between July 2012 and…