Source: Chris Scott, MEATINGPLACE, 8/16/16

Response times to address foodborne illness outbreaks can be accelerated by using sales data and outbreak case reports, according to researchers at IBM Corp.’s Almaden Research Center.

The research team’s findings suggest that public health officials can improve the time it takes find the sources of foodborne illness outbreaks by comparing geo-coded sales data with geo-coded confirmed case reports of illness. The comparisons should allow officials to speed up their investigations in the early stages of an outbreak, the team from the center’s Accelerate Discovery Lab noted in a research paper.

Using real grocery retail scanner data from Germany, the researchers discovered that receiving as few as 10 confirmed illness cases should allow public health officials to narrow their probe into the source of the outbreak to about 12 suspect products. The research indicated that the contaminated product has a 90-percent chance of being in the group of products studied.

Current methods involve public health officials using surveys and questionnaires to collect the information they need to address outbreaks of foodborne illness. The researchers believe their data-based technique can stem the long delays that often allow such outbreaks to affect more consumers. They warn, however, that this approach is designed to supplement, not replace, what the researchers called the “proven tools of outbreak investigation.”

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