Could online restaurant reviews be used by AI to detect illness outbreaks?

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is exploring Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) ability to help them detect and investigate foodborne illness outbreaks.

UKHSA experts have conducted a study where they have assessed different types of AI on their ability to analyse online restaurant reviews and pick out indications of foodborne gastrointestinal illnesses. They hope that one day this could be used to help them to detect and, where necessary, investigate.

How successful was the study?

There were a number of challenges identified in the study that limit the usefulness of the analysis. These would need to be addressed for this use of AI to become reliable and useful, and include:

• Difficulties accessing real-time data.
• Determining exactly which ingredient or factor has caused the illness.
• Differences in spelling and use of slang by users.
• People not correctly attributing the illness to which meal.

Unsurprisingly, Professor Steven Riley, Chief Data Officer at UKHSA said: “Further work is needed before we adopt these methods into our routine approach to tackling foodborne illness outbreaks.”

While this use of AI remains a work-in-progress, efforts to look at ways to use AI to innovate are becoming widespread and leave business owners wondering how AI could benefit their business.

See: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ai-could-help-detect-and-investigate-foodborne-illness-outbreaks