Project IMPACT: Diabetes

About the Experts

About the Experts

Benjamin M. Bluml, RPh
Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation
American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Foundation

 

Ben Bluml designed and directs Project IMPACT: Diabetes.  He has provided direction for practice-based research initiatives since February 1996 and has been the principal architect for the clinical and technology models for the APhA Foundation’s patient care programs.  He works with pharmacists, physicians, payers, research organizations and technology companies across the United States to design and implement innovative collaborative practice programs and health care service delivery systems.  Bluml also is a recognized expert in patient confidentiality systems, collaborative practice and establishing practice-based research networks.

Along with his 17 years at the APhA Foundation and 12 years of pharmacy practice experience, Bluml is the author of several health care software applications including QARx; a quality assessment documentation tool originally created in 1985; CHCA/dB, the original pediatric home health care national research database application produced in 1990; and IDRx, an investigational drug accountability tool produced in collaboration with the U.T.M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1991.  

Bluml has authored numerous professional journal publications related to his work on collaborative practice, health information technology, inter-disciplinary patient care, and quality improvement.  Notable projects and topics that he has published on include Project ImPACT: Hyperlipidemia, Solutions for Securing Patient Privacy, the Patient Self-Management Program for Diabetes, Consensus Definition of Medication Therapy Management, and the Diabetes Ten City Challenge.

Bluml holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC) School of Pharmacy, and has been actively involved in national and international efforts that establish and promote pharmacoinformatics standards that promote improved medication use and health information exchange.  He was a founding participant in the development of the Pharmacy Practice Activity Classification (PPAC), a national taxonomy for practicing pharmacists, and coordinated PPAC publication with the National Library of Medicine. 

He served as a member of the White House Roundtable on the National Pharmaceutical Supply Chain for the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion.  Additionally, he led the American Pharmacists Association 2004 activities that resulted in a consensus definition for Medication Therapy Management from eleven national professional Pharmacy organizations.  

Most recently, Bluml was named the Missouri recipient of the prestigious 2011 Bowl of Hygeia Award.  The UMKC School of Pharmacy Alumni Association recognized him for outstanding service to the profession in 1991; he received the DuPont Pharma Innovative Practitioner Award from the Missouri Pharmacy Association in 1994; American Druggist named him one of the Nation's 50 Most Influential Pharmacists in 1998; and the University of Missouri Kansas City recognized him with an alumni achievement award in 2010.  Bluml received his Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1984.

 

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