Predicting Baby Formula Shortages in the US

When baby formula shortages in the United States peaked in mid-May, panic shopping ensued as rationing was initiated. Headlines declared that the problem would get worse before it got better, with some states declaring emergencies over the shortfall.

News headlines offered a glimpse of what was coming. Semantic Visions Search reveals that media coverage of the shortage – with out-of-stock-rates more than 50 percent in some states – peaked on May 13, with hundreds of articles related to the shortage appearing around the world (SV Search collects roughly 90 percent of online news content across 12 major world languages).

But the threat of the shortage was detected by SV’s threat detection algorithms two days earlier. On May 11, Gloria – our Global Risk Early Warning System that provides situational awareness of emerging threats, trends, and events with updated risk models every 10 minutes – predicted that painful shortages of the essential food item were the most serious threat the United States faced. Gloria’s analysis was delivered a full 24 hours before the White House announced its plans to address the challenge.

Gloria is built upon Semantic Visions’ proprietary software and in-house semantic ontology. Our AI makes it possible to accurately structure unstructured data, understand the semantics of texts in multiple languages, and make predictive analysis based on these data.

The product recall of baby formula by a major manufacturer Abbott Laboratories exacerbated ongoing Covid supply chain problems, and triggered Gloria’s analysis.

To learn more about Semantic Visions’ threat-detection capabilities, or for a free demo, send us an email at sales@semantic-visions.com.