Healthtech comes for foodborne illness
One of the worst feelings in the world is spending a night stuck in the bathroom, wondering how your delicious dinner could’ve betrayed you so viciously.
Foodborne illness can be a particularly bewildering experience, as it makes us more aware of the way we’re putting our lives in the hands of the people and companies who prepare our food. That’s a heavy responsibility.
Now, there’s a technological solution to some of the trickiest parts of food safety management. And public health stands to benefit.
The story: PathSpot is a healthtech helping restaurants and food manufacturers better manage and check for proper food safety and hygiene practices.
- The company offers a hand hygiene surveillance system called the HandScanner, helping staff better manage and stay honest with critical hand-washing practices.
- Other PathSpot tools include a temperature monitoring system, expiration data monitoring, and infrastructure for conducting food safety audits.
A critical time for food safety: With the rise of foodborne illnesses and viral gastroenteritis, fixing gaps in food safety practices has never been more crucial.
- 2024 was a rough year for foodborne illness in the U.S. Consumers were volleyed with a barrage of FDA and USDA food recalls, driven by salmonella, E coli, and listeria outbreaks.
- The end of the year was also filled with headlines on a surge of norovirus cases—a virus often transmitted through eating, by the fecal-oral route.
- However, 2024’s food safety concerns weren’t freak occurrences. 2023 also saw a rise in several leading food safety culprits, per recently released CDC data. Achieving higher food safety across the nation is an ongoing battle for public health authorities.
An age-old challenge: The simple, low-cost immense safety implications of the simple act of hand-washing can be easy to take for granted. Yet, even Ignaz Semmelweiss, the 19th-century Hungarian physician who discovered hand-washing could prevent maternal deaths faced pushback and ridicule until after his death.
- Today, hand-washing is a critical part of public health and a key pillar of food safety. Yet, it’s almost impossible to actually monitor and intervene upon.
- In general, the food industry is a hard one to maintain consistent, high safety standards for, especially given the high-turnover and fast-paced nature of the work.
- That’s where tech like PathSpot comes in: offering restaurant managers and food safety professionals easier ways to keep a finger on the ever-shifting pulse of food safety management, alleviating risk for both consumers and businesses.
We’re excited to watch for the impact of this collaborative healthtech endeavor. It’s a great reminder that we’re all responsible for the health of people around us. So, whether you prepare food or not, do keep washing your hands!