Foodborne Chicago

Foodborne Chicago is a website that connects people who complain about food poisoning on Twitter to the people who can help them out— the Chicago Department of Public Health.

We use computers & code to search Twitter for tweets related to food poisoning in Chicago. We do as much as we can to automatically zero-in on the tweets we think are really about a possible food poisoning case and really coming from Chicago. Then real humans review the tweets and @reply back to people with a link back to this page. More detail here. Questions? We’ve got answers.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded this project a Prototype Fund grant in January 2014. The Chicago Community Trust is the fiscal sponsor for this grant and is supportive in many other ways.

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See complete list of all posts here.

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Today, Leon Wilson, CIO of the Cleveland Foundation, and I will co-present at the Philanthropy Ohio’s annual conference with a theme ...

SMART CHICAGO IS MOVING!!!

Good News!!! The Smart Chicago team is moving and now will be co-located with the City Digital Team at UI ...

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Foodborne Chicago is a Top 25 Innovation in Government

Today our product, Foodborne Chicago, was recognized by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Here’s their writeup: FoodBorne Chicago ...

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Foodborne Chicago on MarketWatch: Twitter bot helps Chicago find dirty restaurants

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Twitter Bot Helps Chicago Officials Find Dirty Restaurants (Popular Science)

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See complete list of all news items here.

Here's the core Foodborne Chicago team:

We work most closely with Joe Olson and Cory Nissen of Tracklytics and the Chicago Department of Public Health. Scott Robbin developed the admin tool and Raed Mansour has been instrumental in many ways. Q Ethan McCallum has also been there from the start. See complete information on who's been involved in this project on the About page of Foodborne Chicago.

Foodborne Chicago