A comprehensive descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analysis of antibiotic products’ demand pre-, amid, and post-COVID-19 in Iran

COVID-19 has affected healthcare businesses such as medicine and face mask distribution networks, particularly the antibiotics distribution sector, because antibiotics significantly combat infections during COVID-19. Hence, re-coordinating the antibiotics supply chain according to changes in antibiotic consumption rates is crucial post-COVID-19 to avoid shortages and the perishing of antibiotics. This paper proposes a data analytical approach to investigate the antibiotics demand fluctuations before, during, and after COVID-19 using several descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analyses, including a graphical trend study, descriptive statistics, two-sample mean hypothesis test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), time series machine learning forecasters, and Pareto analysis. The proposed data analytical approach is employed to analyze the consumption rate of the 73 popular antibiotic products belonging to the top-11 list of antibiotics in Iran, including Amoxicillin, Co-amoxiclav, Azithromycin, Cefalexin, Cefixime, Ciprofloxacin, Clindamycin, Doxycycline, Levofloxacin, Metronidazole, and Penicillin. The consumption volume and Doses used by 1000 Inhabitants per Day (DID) are collected for ten years, from 2013 to 2023, in a data set of size 3582. The results showed the considerable impacts of COVID-19 on the consumption trend of Amoxicillin and Azithromycin, a decline in Penicillin parental consumption in 2021 due to COVID-19 vaccination, and a higher share of parental Levofloxacin during COVID-19. In addition, several prescriptive analyses are proposed.