'I Was Poisoned': Can Crowdsourcing Food Illnesses Help Stop Outbreaks?

In 2008, Patrick Quade ducked out of his office at Morgan Stanley in Manhattan and stopped at a corner deli for a BLT wrap. The next day he suffered explosive diarrhea and was vomiting so violently, "it was like some force was just wringing my stomach out." When he called the deli to report the incident, they said they were not to blame and hung up on him. "Food poisoning kills 3,000 people a year," says Quade. "I thought to myself, I don't know for sure it was the deli. But what if 30 or 40 people in the neighborhood went to that deli and also got sick? Who would know?"Quade, who is now 46 years old, had no website coding experience and no background in food safety, but shortly after that incident, he founded iwaspoisoned.com, a crowdsourcing website where individuals can report food-poisoning incidents, public health officials can receive instant local alerts, and the food industry can be apprised of outbreaks early on.Today, Quade works on his site full time, boasting over 1.7 million page views and more than 75,000 reports from 90 countries and 46 U.S. states since the site's inception. In addition, 20,000 consumers and 350 health agencies subscribe to the site's daily alert service; custom alerts are available for state department agencies.