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Bonnie Kaplan, PhD, FACMI

Lecturer in Biostatistics; Lecturer, Division of Health Informatics; Yale Interdisicplinary Bioethics Center Scholar; Faculty Affiliated Fellow, Yale Information Society Project, Yale Law School; Faculty Affiliate, Yale Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy; Faculty, Program on Biomedical Ethics; Faculty, Center for Biomedical Data Science

Contact Information

Bonnie Kaplan, PhD, FACMI

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Research Summary

Ethical, legal, social, and organizational issues involving information technologies in health care, including electronic health and medical records, privacy, telemedicine and apps, and changing roles of patients and clinicians. Ethnographic sociotechnical evaluation of health information technologies.

Extensive Research Description

Bonnie Kaplan, PhD, FACMI, of the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, is a Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center Scholar, a Faculty Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, Faculty in the Yale School of Medicine's Program for Biomedical Ethics and also the Center for Biomedical Data Science, and Faculty Affiliate of the Yale Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy. A book editor, author of more than 110 refereed and invited papers and book chapters, and presenter of popular tutorials and sessions at international medical informatics and information systems conferences, her research and consulting concern ethical, legal, and social issues related to informatics, artificial intelligence, and data; user perspectives and experiences with health information technology; digital health; and ethnographic sociotechnical evaluation. Among her publications in key journals, such as JAMIA, International Journal of Medical Informatics, MISQ, and Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, are some of the most read papers, editor’s choice, and foundational writings on organizational issues, qualitative/ethnographic sociotechnical approaches, and ethical issues. Among her most recent and forthcoming publications are papers on ethical, legal, and social issues in mobile health and mental health, telemedicine, personalized medicine, health data privacy, and health information technology software, and also sociotechnical theory and health information technology failure.

She has been faculty for the American Medical Informatics Association’s (AMIA) People and Organizational Issues Doctoral Consortium, the National Science Foundation Consortium for the Science of Socio-technical Systems Summer Research Institute, the National Library of Medicine Informatics Course, and the Global Bioethics Initiative International Bioethics Summer School. She also has served as faculty for the Yale Information Society Project-Shalom Comparative Legal Research Institute Israel Seminar at Yale. The only non-European invited to the workshop on "Cybersecurity Challenges in Healthcare: Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects," organized by the CANVAS Consortium, an EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, at the Brocher Foundation in Switzerland (2017), she presented a main paper on "A Socio-Technical View of Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in Cyberspace." In 2019 she addressed the Fall DeVos Medical Ethics Colloquy-The Power of Data and the Dilemma of Privacy, and, additionally, was an invited speaker on ethical issues at the AMIA Annual Symposium.

Dr. Kaplan was elected twice as chair of the AMIA People and Organizational Issues Working Group and of the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Working Group and served two terms as chair of the International Medical Informatics Association Organizational and Social Issues Working Group. She served on AMIA's Vendor Contract Issues Task Force, having previously chaired the AMIA Consumer Health Informatics Task Force. She was appointed to the Scientific Program Committee for the AMIA Annual Symposium several times and to the program committee for the ACM Workshop on Interactive Systems in Health Care multiple times. Dr. Kaplan was a Program Chair of the 2004 conference on Relevant Theory and Informed Practice: A 20 Year Retrospective on IS Research, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.2, The Interaction of Information Systems and co-edited the resulting book as well as co-editing the three editions of H.I.T. or Miss: Lessons Learned from Health Information Technology Projects. She has taught undergraduate through post-doctoral and professional courses in business, medicine, nursing, and arts and sciences programs, as well as on-line graduate and certificate courses in biomedical informatics and in bioethics.

Dr. Kaplan received her B.A. from Cornell University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and a recipient of the AMIA President’s Award.

May 2023

Research Interests

Anthropology, Cultural; Bioethics; Ethics; History; Hospital Information Systems; Humanities; Information Science; Information Systems; Medical Informatics; Medical Informatics Applications; Social Sciences; Sociology; Systems Analysis; Bioethical Issues; Ethical Analysis; Ethical Review; Public Health Informatics; Nursing Informatics; Workflow; Policy; Phenomena and Processes; Anthropology, Education, Sociology and Social Phenomena; Technology, Industry, Agriculture; Health Care

Public Health Interests

Bioethics

Selected Publications