An effective hydrophilic matrix tablet must deliver a stable stream of active compound at an optimal rate to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract in order to achieve a benefi cial therapeutic effect. It must do this whilst moving through the GI tract, passing through a range of different environments, and experiencing environmental changes in pH, fl uid volume, fl uid composition, and physical forces, whilst also accounting for regional changes in drug absorption.In addition to this variable environment, the physico-chemical and biopharmaceutical properties of new drugs (or NCE, "new chemical entities") emerging from the industry R&D pipeline increasingly possess suboptimal solubility [ 1 ] and and/ or permeability characteristics which have an infl uence on the drug delivery. When tasked with developing a hydrophilic matrix tablet formulation, the development team must therefore rationalise these many parameters in order to meet the target product profi le (TPP).Traditional formulation development studies involve expensive and timeconsuming screening of multiple prototypes in preclinical species, in order to identify a limited number of "lead" systems to then take forward into human clinical pharmacokinetic (PK) studies (Fig. 9.1 ). This process can cost over $1.5M and take 12-15 months [ 2 ].