Ragnhildur I Bjarnadottir, PhD, MPH, RN, FAMIA
Associate Professor
On This Page
About Ragnhildur I Bjarnadottir
Dr. Ragnhildur I. Bjarnadottir is a highly accomplished Associate Professor of Nursing, registered nurse (RN9557086), and Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA). With over a decade of experience in nursing informatics and healthcare data science, Dr. Bjarnadottir is among leading researchers on AI in nursing research and a nationally recognized expert in nursing and clinical Natural Language Processing (NLP), with a proven track record of securing competitive federal funding. Dr. Bjarnadottir further contributes to the advancement of healthcare data science nationally through her leadership in the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Nursing Informatics Working Group, her role as Associate Editor for JMIR Aging, and her service on several Scientific Merit Review Boards . At the university level, she actively shapes the future of healthcare innovation by serving on the institutional Artificial Intelligence (AI) Curriculum Committee and supporting faculty and academic program advancement on College of Nursing shared governance committees and working groups
Accomplishments
Teaching Profile
Courses Taught
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NGR7970L – Adv Nursing Project
College of Nursing
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NGR7940L – Residency in Adv Nurs
College of Nursing
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NGR7891 – Health Policy and Finance in Advanced Nursing Practice
College of Nursing
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NGR6870 – Nursing Informatics and Informationa Management
College of Nursing
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NUR4827 – Lead and Inspire 4: Leadership and Innovation in Nursing Practice
College of Nursing
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NGR6840 – Applied Statistical Analysis I
College of Nursing
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NUR3227C – Principles of Personalized Nursing Care 2
College of Nursing
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NUR4108 – Lead and Inspire 3: Policy and Change in Nursing Practice
College of Nursing
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NGR6930 – Special Topics in Nursing
College of Nursing
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NUR4930 – Special Topics
College of Nursing
Teaching Philosophy
Recognized with a 2024 FNA Icon Award for her creative integration of new technologies into nursing education, Dr. Bjarnadottir delivers high-impact instruction across BSN, DNP, and PhD programs. Her pedagogical focus bridges complex informatics and clinical data science into accessible scenarios for students, spanning courses in health policy, Quality Matters-certified informatics, and advanced clinical natural language processing. Dedicated to shaping future nurse scientists, she provides structured, cross-disciplinary mentorship to undergraduate and doctoral researchers within her student research lab.
Research Profile
Dr. Bjarnadottir is a leading expert in nursing artificial intelligence (AI) research and a foremost specialist in nursing natural language processing (NLP). Her research program leverages advanced data science and computational linguistics models to extract actionable insights from unstructured clinical narratives, focusing on enhancing patient safety and health outcomes for hospitalized older adults. A key focus of her pioneering work includes the development of nurse-driven clinical text corpora to identify iatrogenic complications, such as hospital-induced delirium and patient falls, that traditionally remain invisible within structured electronic health records. Backed by a proven track record of competitive federal funding, her innovative research bridges academic-practice partnerships to advance global nursing informatics standards and establish responsible AI workflows in healthcare.
Areas of Interest
- Custom Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs)
- Use of informatics to promote patient-centered care
- AI Applications in Healthcare
- AI for Healthcare
- AI in Healthcare Services
- AI to Improve Health Outcomes and Health Disparities
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Applied Clinical Informatics
- Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Big data analytics
- Causal artificial intelligence
- Computational methods for Big Data
- Data Integration
- Data quality
- Delirium in hospitalized older patients
- Developing AI tools for early risk assessment in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders (ADRD).
- Geriatric Fall
- Health Informatics
- High-dimensional data analysis
- Hospital-Acquired Falls
- Hospital-Induced Delirium
- Integration of Multi-Type, Multi-Scale Health Data
- Large Language Models (LLMs)
- Large Language Models (LLms) and Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Patient Safety
- Prediction Modeling
- Quality of care and patient safety
- data science
- machine learning for predictive analytics
Publications
Academic Articles
Grants
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Harmonizing and Integrating Nursing Data into Multidisciplinary Datasets to Evaluate Hospital Care and Readmissions of Older Adults with Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias
Active
- Role:
- Co-Investigator
- Funding:
- NATL INST OF HLTH NIA
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Strengthening the UF Health Nursing Academic-Practice Partnership through Joint Demonstration Projects with College of Nursing faculty and Shands Nurses
- Role:
- Project Manager
- Funding:
- UF HEALTH SHANDS HOSPITAL
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Harmonizing and Integrating Nursing Data into Multidisciplinary Datasets to Evaluate Hospital Care and Readmissions of Older Adults with Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias
- Role:
- Co-Investigator
- Funding:
- NATL INST OF HLTH NIA
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Advancing Interdisciplinary Science of Aging through Identification of Iatrogenic Complications: The UF EHR Clinical Data Infrastructure for Enhanced Patient Safety among the Elderly (UF-ECLIPSE)
- Role:
- Principal Investigator
- Funding:
- NATL INST OF HLTH NIA
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Shareable, Interoperable Clinical Decision Support for Older Adults: Advancing Fall assessment and Prevention Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Findings into Diverse Primary Care Practices (ASPIRE)
- Role:
- Co-Investigator
- Funding:
- BRIGHAM AND WOMENS HOSPITAL via AGENCY FOR HEALTHCARE RES AND QUALITY
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1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center
- Role:
- Project Manager
- Funding:
- NATL INST OF HLTH NIA
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Tailored Clinical Decision Support Formats Designed to Improve Palliative Care for Cancer and Chronically Ill Patients: A Pre-Clinical Test
- Role:
- Co-Investigator
- Funding:
- NATL INST OF HLTH NINR
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Advancing Interdisciplinary Science of Aging through Identification of Iatrogenic Complications: The UF EHR Clinical Data Infrastructure for Enhanced Patient Safety among the Elderly (UF-ECLIPSE)
- Role:
- Principal Investigator
- Funding:
- NATL INST OF HLTH NIA
Education
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Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing
Columbia University School of Nursing
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Master of Public Health, Concentration: Sociomedical Sciences
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
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Bachelor of Science in Nursing
University of Iceland, Department of Nursing
Contact Details
- Business:
- (352) 273-6508
- Business:
- rib@ufl.edu
- Business Mailing:
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1225 CENTER DR
GAINESVILLE FL 32610 - Business Street:
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1225 Center Dr
Gainesville FL 32611