Darren S. Ferer

2025 Distinguished Service Award Winner

Darren S. Ferer is an informatics pharmacist with over 30 years of experience implementing, managing and maintaining various electronic medical record systems.  He holds various vendor-specific certifications and is a certified professional in healthcare information and management systems (CPHIMS).  His interests include improving patient care via optimizing the electronic health record and various medication related information technologies.  He has experience in numerous applications of pharmacy automation, including robotics, central pharmacy automation, automated dispensing systems, barcode scanning and sterile products workflow systems.  His career objective is working as a team to leverage the integrated medication platform within the electronic medical record to help medical staff, nursing staff and other ancillary healthcare disciplines improve patient care and patient safety.

Ferer received his Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1993.  He began his career staffing overnights at Erie County Medical Center, a level one trauma center in Buffalo.  By late 1995, he was splitting his time between staffing and informatics.  For the past 22 years, Ferer has been in a full-time informatics role at Kaleida Health, an integrated delivery network in Buffalo and Western New York.  As a way of staying involved with patient care activities outside of his full-time role, he has maintained per diem roles, first in an independent community pharmacy and more recently in an inpatient setting at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center.

Ferer has been a member of ASHP since he was in pharmacy school.  Since 2010, he’s been serving in the ASHP Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology (SOPIT) as a member of the Section Advisory Group (SAG) on Operation and Automation.  While he’s never served in any formal leadership role in ASHP or any other post graduate pharmacy organization, he’s collaborated on numerous contributions through his SOPIT SAG workgroup involvement on ASHP Guidelines and Statements, webinars, podcasts and other AJHP publications.  He’s also contributed to ASHP Research and Education Foundation reports on radio frequency identification (RFID) in medication systems.