Did you know that 1 in 6 Americans get sick with a foodborne illness every year? And did you know that the best way to prevent the spread of foodborne illness is by simply washing your hands? The cleanliness of a restaurant’s staff seriously affects the safety of the restaurant’s food. To help consumers determine the safety of the restaurants they eat at, trained chef Matthew Eierman developed an app that gives customers easy access to public health inspection records.
Local health departments regularly inspect restaurants to make sure they are following proper food handling procedures. Many of these records are digitalized and available for the public; however, they aren’t as accessible as Eierman would like them to be. Several of the records are hard to find on the internet or are buried in archaic filing systems.
The HDScores application uses public records and a specially developed algorithm to create a grading system that informs customers of the safety of restaurants in their area. Eierman hopes that the app will help customers navigate health inspection records and make safer food choices.
The app was developed just a few months ago and is still in its beginning stages. It currently only includes about 500,000 of the 1.5 million establishments nationwide that are required to have regular health inspections. Eierman hopes to continue expanding and updating the application in areas where health inspections are public and digitalized. Expansion in areas where records are still kept on paper will take much longer because paper records have to be transferred into a digital format.
The application is available on iOS and will soon be available on Android. To learn more about the HDScores app, click here.
—Cami Mills
