Has anyone been able to develop computerized decision support for food dyes and medication orders in the EMR? We recently had a near-miss event with a patient with known allergy to Yellow 5 (anaphylaxis), so are looking for more automated decision support to alert the prescriber and the pharmacist regarding food dye content within medications. In our case, the allergy was properly documented, but no alert was triggered when ordering/verifying a medication containing food dye. I would love to learn from others regarding safety nets around this.

A similar issue was the subject of the ISMP Acute Care Medication Safety Alert dated June 17, 2021. The safe practice recommendations from ISMP included: 1) list the known food dye allergy in a clearly visible location on all drug-related pages/screens of EMR, and 2) all allergies to color additives or food dyes should be properly coded to allow for clinical decision support, when possible, during allergy screening. We have both of these measures implemented, but these measures were not sufficient in our case given that our EMR provider (Cerner) does not have CDS allergy screening in place for food dyes and medications.