Rate My Professor Tania Moerenhout

Dr Tania Moerenhout is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Bioethics at the University of Otago's Dunedin School of Medicine, within the Faculty of Medicine. She holds an MD, MPhil, and PhD in philosophy from Ghent University, completed in 2019, with her doctoral research examining ethical challenges posed by electronic health records, particularly their impact on patient autonomy and the patient-provider relationship. A general practitioner since graduating in Belgium in 2009, she practiced there until 2020 before relocating to Aotearoa New Zealand. She now works part-time at Broadway Medical Centre in Dunedin and maintains general registration with the Medical Council of New Zealand, integrating clinical practice with her academic role.

Moerenhout's research focuses on digital health ethics, the ethics and philosophy of new medical technologies, clinical ethics, and the patient-doctor relationship. Her interests encompass ethical issues in virtual consultations, artificial intelligence applications in primary care, remote monitoring technologies for elder care, and the secondary use of primary healthcare data. Notable publications include 'A Novel Pathway for Integrating Ethics into Digital Technology Design: A Person-Centred Co-Design Approach Developed in the Context of Assistive Technologies for Older Adults' (Science & Engineering Ethics, 2026, co-authored with Inga Hunter and Angela Ballantyne); 'The Elephant in the Room: A Postphenomenological View on the Electronic Health Record and Its Impact on the Clinical Encounter' (2020); 'Ethical Assessment of Virtual Consultation Services: Scoping Review and Development of a Practical Ethical Checklist' (Journal of Primary Health Care, 2024, with Madeleine Reid); and 'Eight Caring Technology Principles: Development and Implementation of a Framework for Responsible Health Technology Innovation' (2024). With more than 500 citations across her works, she contributes significantly to the field. Moerenhout chairs the WONCA Working Party on Ethics and Professionalism, serves on the University of Otago Human Ethics Committee and the National Ethics Advisory Committee (appointed 2023), and is a member of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and the European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Healthcare. She convenes the Digital Health Information Governance and Ethics paper in the University of Otago's postgraduate Digital Health programme and participates in clinical ethics support.