With the advent of easy to use analytical and research instrumentation the Raman technique has finally become accepted and is now widely used by pharmaceutical and biomedical companies. Applications range from simple polymorphic crystal form and protein studies to Raman mapping studies of active/excipient distribution and association that give a better understanding of drug dissolution and effectiveness. Examples of such work will be discussed.

More recently with the growing confidence in the power of Raman spectroscopy pharmaceutical and biomedical companies have teamed with instrument companies to develop specific Raman tools. One example of this is the development of a Raman mutiwell/microarray analyzer. High Throughput screening (HTS) is the latest approach in analytical technology. Used particularly in the pharmaceutical industry and in the life science laboratories, this method enables systematic screening of drug design and high throughput analysis of batch production. Combinatorial chemistry is a statistical approach in synthetic chemistry.