Chemometrics in pharmaceutical analysis

Chemometrics is now a well established discipline prompting independent research and development in its own right but, for their continuing success, chemometric developments must be relevant to the real needs of analysis. Pharmaceutical analysis, i.e., physical and chemical assessment of drugs and their dosage forms, needs more formal application of mathematical and statistical methods. The organisation of the laboratory, the development, optimization, assessment and interpretation of methods, and the evaluation of the data produced can all benefit from the application of chemometrics. Here, a selection of the more challenging problems facing the pharmaceutical analyst is presented, the potential for chemometrics is considered and some consequent implications for utilisation, against a background of control and regulation are discussed.