About AllergenMaps
Who We Are
We are PharmD students at Purdue University looking to make an impact on public health. We started this project in September of 2025 after realizing the extreme disconnect in information between excipients and the allergies they may cause. We came to this realization through our experiences working in community pharmacies, as well as Kai's personal experience facing this problem as a result of his Celiac Disease.
Oftentimes doctors and pharmacists are only focusing on active ingredients, leaving patients with allergies to inactive ingredients to go overlooked. If a patient is allergic to an excipient, it is a painstaking and tedious process to determine if their medication could be a trigger. This often includes spending hours on hold speaking to drug manufacturers or searching through various drug databases for information which may not even exist.
AllergenMaps seeks to streamline this process, saving time for both patients and pharmacies while giving patients confidence that their medication will not make them sick.
— Simon & Kai, Founders
Meet the Team
Simon & Kai
Co-Founders
PharmD students at Purdue University with firsthand experience in community pharmacy and personal motivation to solve the excipient transparency problem.
Alex
Lead Developer
Full-stack developer responsible for building and maintaining the AllergenMaps platform, data pipeline, and allergen mapping engine.
The Problem
Active ingredients typically account for just 5-10% of a drug's weight. The remaining 90-95% consists of excipients (inactive ingredients or fillers). The FDA has approved around 200 excipients, many of which contain common allergens such as gluten, lactose, gelatin, artificial dyes, and peanut oil.
Despite their prevalence, excipients are not consistently disclosed in a clear or accessible way on prescription labels. Patients with allergies or autoimmune conditions — such as celiac disease, lactose intolerance, or severe peanut allergies — face significant challenges determining whether their medications are safe to take.
Our Solution
For Patients
- Search any medication without consulting a manufacturer
- Set your allergen profile once and see safety flags instantly
- Compare manufacturer versions to find the safest option
For Healthcare Providers
- Look up medications by NDC, active ingredient, or drug class
- Preemptively check for allergens before prescribing
- Avoid prescribing a medication that triggers patient allergies
How It Works
Data Ingestion
We pull drug label data from the FDA's openFDA API and DailyMed, covering 200,000+ drug labels with inactive ingredient lists.
Ingredient Standardization
Our proprietary system standardizes ingredient data from FDA sources into a consistent format, with built-in quality checks and expert review to ensure accuracy.
Allergen Mapping
Each excipient is mapped to 30+ allergen categories — dairy, corn, gluten, dyes, PEG, gelatin, peanut, sulfite, and more — based on FDA and clinical research.
Three-Stage Safety Flagging
Each medication is flagged as Safe, Ambiguous, or Not Safe relative to your allergen profile, so you can make informed decisions at a glance.
Contact
Have questions, feedback, or data corrections? We'd love to hear from you.
Email: allergenmaps@gmail.com
Visit our contact page for more ways to reach us.
Read our disclaimer and data sources.