A recent study has found that understanding how pills break and how soft or hard they are could help us make better pills with less medicine in them. This could also lead to pills that are designed using computers, making the process more efficient. The study looked at how the strength and brittleness of pills change as they become more porous, or full of tiny holes. It found that as pills become more porous, they also become more brittle and weaker, following a specific pattern. The study also looked at seven common ingredients and twelve mixtures, and found that how soft or hard the material is has a big influence on how strong and brittle the pill is. This is the first time this relationship has been proven with experiments. The researchers showed that materials that are more soft and pliable have higher strength and lower brittleness at the same porosity. If these findings are confirmed, they could help predict important qualities of pills, like how strong and brittle they are, using very little medicine. This could be a big step towards designing pills using computers and data, rather than lots of trial and error. The research will be published in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics.