By Hui Zhao📧
In Tutorials in Operations Research: Advancing the Frontiers of OR/MS: From Methodologies to Applications, 2023, 228–245. https://doi.org/10.1287/educ.2023.0258
Although the pharmaceutical industry is vital to the economy and the efficiency of pharmaceutical supply chains directly affects the quality and cost of patient care, pharmaceutical supply chains have been largely under-researched compared with the thriving research on medical services/hospital operations by the INFORMS community. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry faces a unique economic and regulatory environment with many supply chain challenges. In this tutorial, I aim to provide a basic understanding of the complicated pharmaceutical supply chain and the challenges it faces. Using drug shortages (a persistent problem facing the pharmaceutical industry, government, and the society) and many other examples, I demonstrate that the richness and uniqueness of the pharmaceutical supply chains provide great opportunities for impactful research.
Keywords: Pharmaceutical supply chains; Drug shortages; Supply chain management; Public health