ARMONK, N.Y. – IBM Research scientists have announced the creation of new data-analytics technology that will speed up investigations during the early stages of a foodborne-illness outbreak. The new methodology is designed to greatly minimize the public effects of food-related illnesses such as salmonella, E. coli and norovirus infections, according to a company statement.
By analyzing retail-scanner data from grocery stores against maps of confirmed cases of foodborne illnesses, IBM researchers can now significantly narrow the time it takes to identify a specific contaminated food source, the company announced
Using the newly developed methodology to review spatio-temporal data, researchers can now determine the geographic location and time of consumption for up to hundreds of grocery-product categories. Next, IBM’s process can analyze the shelf life of retail food products and their likelihood of containing a particular pathogen, and then track this information to the actual location of an illness outbreak.
Most investigations of foodborne illnesses can take several weeks, and even months, to identify the contaminated food source, upping the negative economic and health effects of a disease outbreak. With IBM’s new retail-tracking methodology, researchers claim that they are able to scale down the investigation to about a dozen suspected food products within just 12 hours.
“When there’s an outbreak of foodborne illness, the biggest challenge facing public-health officials is the speed at which they can identify the contaminated food source and alert the public,” said Kun Hu, a public health research scientist at IBM Research-Almaden in San Jose, Calif. “While traditional methods like interviews and surveys are still necessary, analyzing big data from retail grocery scanners can significantly narrow down the list of contaminants in hours for further lab testing. Our study shows that big data and analytics can profoundly reduce investigation time and human error and have a huge impact on public health.”
IBM’s new process has been applied to an E. coli outbreak case in Norway. Using 17 confirmed cases of foodborne infection, public-health officials used the methodology to quickly analyze grocery-scanner data and identify a list of 10 contaminants from more than 2,500 retail food products.
Issues surrounding cleanliness and food safety are paramount to the purchase decisions of retail foodservice consumers. Technomic’s 2015 Retailer Meal Solutions Consumer Trend Report found that 83% of grocery and convenience-store customers strongly link cleanliness and food safety, and their perception of both of these attributes is central to their decision on whether or not to buy food and drink from a retail location.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.