The Past, Present, and Future of Tableting Technology

Abstract

The evolution of tableting technology was briefly reviewed and the predictions and suggestions for the future of this field were made. The factors that would be primarily responsible for the progress in the development of the justified formulations and processes of the future were pointed out to be dependent on the successful implementation of the following concepts: universal excipient harmonizations; standardized excipient functionality testing; compaction data bank; preformulation database; formulation and process expert systems; a new generation of tableting equipment; and interactive electronic reports. A case study on the use of an integrated compaction research system to evaluate the performance of customized punch displacement profiles was briefly discussed. A special emphasis was given to the first-time application (in the field of pharmaceutical technology) of a prototype interactive electronic data reporting method. Two short communication case studies were presented using the data obtained from milling and compaction studies in order to demonstrate the potential usefulness of the interactive digital data communication in the area of solid-dosage forms.