Functional coatings are highly engineered drug delivery systems whose structure and composition are critical to the controlled release of the active pharmaceutical ingredient in the human body. These products are at the high value end of the market and represent sophisticated solutions to difficult disease management. Manufacturing these products is challenging largely because pharmaceutical processing is complex that has traditionally been dominated by empirical understanding. The increase in manufacturing complexity coincides with the paradigm shift that the pharmaceutical industry is facing today where emphasis is now being placed on fostering a greater product and manufacturing understanding for building quality into the product and enable continuous manufacturing. Building on the recent successful demonstration of combined optical coherence tomography and terahertz real-time sensing for a coating process where an unprecedented level of in-process diagnostic information were obtained, we will now perform systematic coating process investigation to quantify and model the effects of the key process parameters. The developed data-driven models will in turn allow us to identify the optimal process conditions for validation against science-based process modelling, which can then be used to explain process observations. Ultimately, enhanced process understanding will enable the development of model-based predictive control for the full implementation of continuous manufacturing for producing next generation pharmaceutical products. This project will be supported by a world leading supplier of manufacturing equipment (Bosch, Germany), academic technology collaborators (University of Cambridge, UK and University of Liverpool, UK) and coating materials suppliers (BASF, UK and Colorcon, UK).