Nikola Biller-Andorno is a physician, philosopher and bioethicist with German and Swiss nationality. She is Professor and Chair of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Zurich and Director of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Bioethics.

Her work is situated at the intersection of biomedical ethics, health policy and public health. Her research focuses on the ethical governance of health systems, patient-centred care and patient experiences, digital health and artificial intelligence, and global public health ethics.

Nikola Biller-Andorno studied medicine at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and philosophy at the University of Hagen. She holds doctorates in medicine and philosophy and completed her habilitation in ethics and theory of medicine at the University of Göttingen. From 2002 to 2004, she worked as an ethicist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. In 2004, she was appointed Professor of Medical Ethics at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Since 2005, she has been Full Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Zurich; since 2007, she has directed the Institute of Biomedical Ethics, now the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine.

From 2012 to 2013, she was a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice at the Harvard School of Public Health and the New England Journal of Medicine, and a Visiting Professor in the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School. From 2013 to 2014, she was a Safra Network Fellow at Harvard University. From 2016 to 2020, she was a Fellow at the Collegium Helveticum, working on the digital transformation of medicine. From 2021 to 2025, she served as Vice Dean for Innovation and Digitalization at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zurich.

• Biomedical ethics and health policy
• Ethical governance of health systems and health-care financing
• Patient-centred care, patient experiences and learning health systems
• Digital health, artificial intelligence and information ethics
• Global public health ethics and ethical issues in public health communication

• Professor and Chair of Biomedical Ethics, University of Zurich
• Director, Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Zurich
• Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Bioethics at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine
• Member, Foundation Council, Swiss National Science Foundation
• Member, Conseil d’orientation stratégique, University of Geneva, 2025–2029 term
• Member, European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, European Commission
• Senate member, Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences
• Fellow, Hastings Center
• Senior Fellow, Commonwealth Fund

• Ethicist, World Health Organization, 2002–2004
• Professor of Medical Ethics, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 2004–2005
• President, International Association of Bioethics, 2009–2011
• Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, 2012–2013
• Visiting Professor, Division of Medical Ethics, Harvard Medical School, 2012–2013
• Safra Network Fellow, Harvard University, 2013–2014
• Fellow, Collegium Helveticum, 2016–2020
• Vice Dean for Innovation and Digitalization, Faculty of Medicine, University of Zurich, 2021–2025
• Member, Central Ethics Committee, Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, 2009–May 2016
• Board member, Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, 2022–2025
• Member, National Research Council, Swiss National Science Foundation, Division IV Programmes, from 2020; Vice President of the Division from 2022
• Member, Die Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, 2001–2006

• Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice, 2012–2013
• Fellow, Hastings Center, since 2021
• Senior Fellow, Commonwealth Fund, since 2021
• Dr. Margrit Egnér Foundation Prize, 2024
• SNIS International Geneva Award, with Giovanni Spitale and Federico Germani, 2025

Nikola Biller-Andorno’s research connects biomedical ethics, health policy and public health. She examines how health systems can be governed in ethically and democratically accountable ways, how patient experiences can be heard and used in learning health systems, and how digital technologies and artificial intelligence can be responsibly integrated into medicine and public health communication. Earlier work addressed ethical issues in transplantation medicine, biobanks, human-subjects research and health-care financing.

• Ask the Patient: Improving Swiss Healthcare Value through Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROMs)
• Boosting Public Discourse: Towards a Targeted, Evidence-Based Strategy to Improve Moral Reasoning
• Chronic pain and financial toxicity
• Digital Patient Decision Aid for Oligometastatic Cancer Patients
• DIPEx (Database of individual Patient Experiences) – DIPEx.ch
• EFBRI – An Evolving Ethical Framework Informing Breastfeeding Research and Interventions
• Ethical dimensions of digital technology-assisted physiotherapy: fundamentals for ethics education of physiotherapists
• Ethics of Triage
• Experiences of migration and displacement in Switzerland
• Infodemic management and information ethics
• Integrating Ethics and Governance into the Design of Artificial Intelligence Technologies for Health
• Moral distress among medical managers in Swiss hospitals - status quo and potential solutions
• SHARED-VSC
• The Outbreak. Pandemics & Bioethics: Co-Designing a Graphic Novel
• Virtual Patients for Shared Decision-Making Training

ZORA (Zurich Open Repository and Archive)

PubMed