This App Tells You if That Taco Truck Will Make You Sick

Illustration: Ryo Takemasa

Forget Yelp. Soon an app could delivers something far more helpful than taco truck recommendations: a list of restaurants that might make you sick.

Earlier this year, University of Rochester researchers used a Twitter-searching tool called nEmesis to pick out possible cases of food poisoning. GPS data is accessible through Twitter’s API. By cross-referencing that info with the coordinates of restaurants, the system tags patrons and follows them for 72 hours, watching for tweets containing things like “threw up” or “#tummyache.” Thanks to those who feel compelled to share their GI distress with the world, nEmesis detected 480 suspected cases of food poisoning in just four months. The results correlated with health department scores — the more sick tweets, the more likely an eatery had recently been given a failing grade.

Cocreator Adam Sadilek, who now works at Google, sees two possible uses for nEmesis: as a warning app for consumers and as a new “adaptive” inspection system for health officials, telling them which restaurants most need looking in on. What we’re having trouble digesting: Now people will have even more reason to overshare.