Who's Not Coming to Dinner? Evaluating Trends in Online Restaurant Reservations for Outbreak Surveillance

Authors

  • Elaine O. Nsoesie Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital; Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech
  • David L. Buckeridge Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University
  • John S. Brownstein Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital; Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v5i1.4568

Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether trends in online restaurant table reservations can be used as an early indicator for a disease outbreak. We monitored table availability using OpenTable; an online restaurant table reservation site for cities in the USA and Mexico. We searched for available tables for lunch between 12-3:30pm and dinner between 6-10:30pm. Using time series analysis methods, we elucidated and compared the time series data of table availabilities to data collected for various disease outbreaks.

Author Biography

Elaine O. Nsoesie, Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital; Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech

Elaine Nsoesie is a postdoctoral fellow at Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital and Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech. She has a PhD in Computational Biostatistics from the Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology interdisciplinary program at Virginia Tech.

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Published

2013-03-24

How to Cite

Nsoesie, E. O., Buckeridge, D. L., & Brownstein, J. S. (2013). Who’s Not Coming to Dinner? Evaluating Trends in Online Restaurant Reservations for Outbreak Surveillance. Online Journal of Public Health Informatics, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v5i1.4568

Issue

Section

Poster Presentations