Heidi Gilstad

Heidi Gilstad is an Associate Professor and Study Programme Leader at the Centre for Academic and Professional Communication (SEKOM), Department of Language and Literature, NTNU. She previously held roles including postdoc (2014–2016) and researcher (2016–2018) at the Health Informatics Research Group, Faculty of Medicine, NTNU. She earned her PhD in Applied Linguistics (Health Communication) from NTNU in 2012, focusing on obstetric ultrasound expertise in South Africa. Her research spans health communication involving medical technologies, ethics-in-interaction, professional expertise, women’s and children’s health discourses, and qualitative methodologies.

Education:

• PhD in Applied Linguistics (2012), NTNU
• Master’s/Thesis in Educational Technology (1996–1999), NTNU

Research Interests: Dr. Gilstad’s work emphasizes the sociocultural dimensions of health communication, particularly in contexts involving medical technologies and multicultural settings. She investigates how communication shapes professional expertise and patient understanding, with a focus on eHealth literacy and healthcare equity. Her studies often involve discourse analysis and ethnographic methods.

Publications Trends: Her recent work highlights themes like patient-nurse communication in rheumatology clinics (2025), Nordic eHealth policy (2024), and AI-driven healthcare communication (2023). She frequently collaborates with institutions like SEKOM and the Nordic eHealth Benchmarking initiative, producing both academic articles and policy reports.

Advising & Grants: While specific grant details are not listed, her involvement in projects like the standardized cancer patient pathways evaluation (2021) and the development of an eHealth MOOC (2022) reflects her role in applied research and educational innovation.

Labs/Teams: Core member of SEKOM and former contributor to the Health Informatics Research Group (NSKP), Department of Neuroscience.