Objective To study the design of foodborne disease early warning system and provide information technology support for government departments to prevent and control foodborne diseases. Methods Within the overall framework of population health information, the information of foodborne patients was collected based on the regional health information platform of prefecture-level cities. The geocoding technology was used to assign spatial location attributed to the monitoring data, and the spatial analysis method was used for visual display and statistical analysis. Results The design of the system broke through the bottleneck of the sentinel hospital, and extended the collection scope to all medical institutions and community health service centers in Zhongshan City, which could automatically obtain the main complaint cases that meet the definition of foodborne diseases, and grasp the foodborne diseases of the whole city from the individuals. The patient's visit and medication were summarized daily for all suspected foodborne illness cases on the day. Based on the spatial statistical analysis model, the service management personnel were notified to the suspected foodborne disease outbreak event on the same day. Conclusion The system design model based on regional health information platform can help solve the problem of hysteresis in foodborne disease early warning in China, and it will play a positive role in promoting public health informationization construction at local level and innovation in early warning and prevention mode.