Application of neural computing in pharmaceutical product development.

Neural computing technology is capable of solving problems involving complex pattern recognition. This technology is applied here to pharmaceutical product development. The most commonly used computational algorithm, the delta back-propagation network, was utilized to recognize the complex relationship between the formulation variables and the in vitro drug release parameters for a hydrophilic matrix capsule system. This new computational technique was also compared with the response surface methodology (RSM). Artificial neural network (ANN) analysis was able to predict the response values for a series of validation experiments more precisely than RSM. ANN may offer an alternative to RSM because it allows for the development of a system that can incorporate literature and experimental data to solve common problems in the pharmaceutical industry.