Mining serialized data: Opportunities in the pharmaceutical supply chain

Abstract : The serialization of pharmaceutical products enables the detailed monitoring of pharmaceutical flows that should lead to improvements in the performance of healthcare institutions. This article provides an analysis of the opportunities for data mining and data visualization in the pharmaceutical industry. It yields two main contributions (i) it lists the main potential usage of data mining and data visualization when applied to serialized pharmaceutical data; and (ii) it identifies the data requirements for implementation. The proposed analysis reveals that serialization analytics should help reduce the distribution of counterfeit drugs, improve demand forecasting and provide insights into improving inventory management decisions