National Retail Data Monitor: Daily OTC Product Sales for Public Health

Daily sales data for over-the-counter healthcare products collected from over 15,000 retail stores in near real time. The National Retail Data Monitor is a public health surveillance tool created by Michael M. Wagner at the University of Pittsburgh. It serves as a national data utility to reduce effort for data providers and health departments.

Use Cases

• Syndromic surveillance based on daily sales-volume data of selected OTC products.
• Early outbreak detection based on near real-time collection of retail sales data.
• Analyzing population health trends based on aggregated national retail data.
• Evaluating public health interventions based on changes in OTC product sales patterns.

Strengths

• Data is collected from over 15,000 retail stores, providing a broad national sample.
• Data collection occurs in near real time, enabling timely public health analysis.
• The system is described as one of the first national data utilities for this purpose, reducing effort for stakeholders.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

University of Pittsburgh (Michael M. Wagner)

Collection Method

Collected and analyzed daily sales data from retail stores.

Geography

National (United States, inferred from description)