We develop unique data about illegal online pharmacies’ activities.
The operations of illegal online pharmacies are by nature obscure. Who are they, what do they sell, in what amounts, what is their economic impact, and what are the health implications for their customers? Our novel methods, built around artificial intelligence and big data techniques, allow us to address these questions by offering the following services:
IOPs Network Monitoring
IOPs form a network composed by thousands of densely interconnected nodes. This network is highly dynamic, with nodes dying out and new nodes arising, continuously modifying the network’s topology. Our IOPs Network Monitoring service maps this network and follows its temporal evolution, identifying the most active and central nodes at any given time.
IOPs sell thousands of different medicines in amounts that vary across medicines and across time. Our IOPs Sales Monitoring service tracks the temporal evolution of IOPs sales for each medicine and estimates the economic loss this represents to the industry.
IOPs sell medicines without regulatory and medical oversight. This means that such medicines’ quality is not assured, and they may not even be the appropriate treatment for the customer. Our IOPs Health Impact Monitoring service helps assess the health consequences of patients’ buying medicines from IOPs and the associated healthcare costs.
