Nice to meet you.
I conduct research on spiritual care as an integral, evidence-based aspect of patient-centered care in Swiss and European healthcare institutions. Here’s my CV.
What is Spiritual Care?
Spiritual care is a professional clinical discipline that integrates patients’ spiritual and existential needs into medical care. Spiritual care specialists (chaplains) and generalists — physicians, nurses and other health professionals, especially in palliative medicine.
Spiritual Care providers develop care plans, advise in ethical decision-making to align treatment with patient values, and provide non-directive, process and resource-oriented care to patients and their relatives.
Research links spiritual care to lower symptom burden, reduced anxiety, and improved satisfaction among patients and staff, and in some countries, it is embedded into healthcare quality standards.
compassionate, person-centred care
Vision
Hospitals and other clinical settings are places of enormous pain, grief, and suffering. While healthcare professionals do their best to care for patients, much of what makes us human can get lost.
As spiritual care researcher, my vision is a world in which healthcare puts humanity first, treatment is aligned with patient values, and compassionate, person-centred care is deeply ingrained in medical culture.
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)
Questions that matter.
Research
My research is focussed on the central challenges faced by both spiritual care specialists (chaplains) and generalist spiritual care providers (physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals).
It addresses pressing challenges for the future development of spiritual care as an integral component of person-centred healthcare.
My Research in numbers.
Featured Publication

Special Issue on Digital Spiritual Care
This special issue of Health and Social Care Chaplaincy addresses the rapidly evolving role of technology in health and social care settings, which is changing how, when and where medical care is provided.
Traditionally rooted within in-person presence at the bedside, the digitalization of healthcare challenges spiritual care providers to adapt and innovate their professional practices to a model of care based on digital and often remote and ambulatory models of care.
This special issue offers a broad overview of current research on digital tools for spiritual care education, examines the acceptability of digital modalities in spiritual care practice, and highlights the experiences of chaplains navigating the front line of the digital health transformation.
Reference:
More publications:
Going places Together.
Projects
John Templeton Foundation
Digital Spiritual Care: Towards a Vision for Compassionate Care in Digital Health
An international research project pioneering the integration of spiritual care with digital healthcare through research, education, and advocacy.
The project develops a competency framework for digital spiritual care, trains chaplains in digital care delivery, and empowers them to become leaders in compassionate, person-centred digital healthcare.
Project website.
University of Zurich
URPP Digital Religion(s)
Research on the digitalisation of spiritual care, including the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR), telehealth platforms and artificial intelligence by patients and providers.
Project website.
UZH and Transforming Chaplaincy
Telechaplaincy Community of Practice
A community of practice with over 300 members which meets regularly to discuss the digitalisation of spiritual care.
Project website.
URPP Digital Religion(s)
The MEEET-LAB
Workshops and events for the public to engage with and reflect on the role of emerging technologies in answering the big questions in life.
Project website.
University of Zurich
SpiritRAG
SpiritRAG is an LLM-based question‑answering system to query over 7,500 United Nations documents related to religion, spirituality, health, and education. Winner of the 2025 Postdoc Team Award.
Project website.
Swiss National Science Foundation
The “Spiritual Dimension” of Health at WHO
A historical investigation on the surprising career of the “spiritual dimension” of health at WHO.
Swiss National Science Foundation
Religion & Health in the United Nations
Research on the global norms and local practices of religion and health in the United Nations, particularly regarding faith-sensitive Mental Health and Psychosocial Support. (MHPSS).
Project website.
Let’s Work Together
Contact
Whether you’re ready to kick off a project, want to collaborate, or just want to say hi: I’d love to hear from you.
“Health is a state of complete physical, social and spiritual well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”
Halfdan Mahler
former Secretary-General of the World Health Organization (1973-1988)
© 2026 Fabian Winiger
