Ever Get Food Poisoning? We Have Great News

Getting hit with a bout of food poisoning is hardly a walk in the park. You’re bound to your bathroom, grappling with physical pain, and kicking yourself for eating whatever mystery food did this to you. However, out of all this grossness comes good news. Google and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health have supposedly build a computer system that can help us track down food poisoning culprits.

Google and Harvard tried out their new technology in Chicago and Las Vegas between November 2016 and March 2017. There, researchers applied machine learning to anonymous searches and location data from Google users with the aim to link food poisoning symptom keywords to restaurants users recently ate at.

So if you were to search “vomiting,” Google and Harvard’s computer system would track your previous locations to best match where you potentially picked up the bug.

Once those links had been found, researchers send health inspectors to the specific restaurants. Comparing their results to traditional customer complaints, the researchers found that their computer system was way more accurate. In Chicago, 52.1% of inspections done as a result of the computer’s findings were deemed unsafe compared to 39.4% of inspections prompted by customer complaints.

Alongside Harvard, Google researchers have created a program that is more accurate at identifying potential sources of foodborne illnesses than traditional methods.https://t.co/qfNkAUMAmF

— Interesting Engineering (@IntEngineering) November 10, 2018

The most surprising outcome of this study was that in 38% of the cases recorded, the foodborne illness did not come from the most recently visited restaurant.

A person affected by food poisoning won’t usually begin to feel symptoms until 48 hours or longer after the bug has entered their system.

Google has teamed up with Harvard to develop an algorithm which alerts you to restaurants that carry a higher risk of food poisoning https://t.co/mz4M6vDW9O

— Richard Lee (@dlackty) November 11, 2018

Not only can this new algorithm help falsely accused restaurants regain credibility after a food poisoning scare, but it can also put more pressure on “unsafe” restaurants to raise their standards and better comply with health codes. Gut-saving tech for the win!