Dre BOILLAT-BLANCO

Noémie Boillat Blanco is a clinician-researcher, senior consultant at the infectious diseases service at the University Hospital of Lausanne, and senior lecturer (Privat Docent) at the University of Lausanne. She leads the outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) unit and coordinates the DOMINO project (DOMicile avec suivi INfectiologique Optimalisé), aimed at improving patient transitions from hospital and the community.

She trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases and earned a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Basel. Her PhD research, conducted at Ifakara Health Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2012-2015), focused on the comorbidity between communicable and non-communicable diseases, and on the causes of fever in the emergency department. Afterwards, she served as senior registrar in tropical medicine at Unisanté in Lausanne before joining the infectious disease unit at the University Hospital of Lausanne.

Research topics

Noémie Boillat Blanco’s research team focuses on developing, evaluating and implementing context-adapted decision support tools to optimize antibiotic prescribing (antimicrobial stewardship) and the use of diagnostic tests (diagnostic stewardship) across different healthcare settings worldwide, with a strong global health perspective.

Her main research areas include:

Optimizing Antibiotic Use in Respiratory Infections: From Evidence to Implementation

Over the past eight years, Noémie Boillat Blanco’s research has concentrated on clinical trials evaluating interventions aimed at optimizing antibiotic prescribing and ensuring patient safety in community-acquired respiratory tract infections. With the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, improving antibiotic has become a critical priority. She designs and tailors interventions to fit specific healthcare settings, enhancing their impact and usability.

• As the Principal Investigator of an NRP72-funded project (SNSF grant 407240_167133/1), she demonstrated that point-of-care procalcitonin (PCT POC) testing led to a cost-effective 26% absolute reduction in 28-day antibiotic prescriptions compared to usual care [1, 2]. These findings contributed to the Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases incorporating procalcitonin into pneumonia treatment guidelines.
• She is also the co-Principal Investigator of the "ImPro" study (SNSF grant 32003B_212429), which evaluates the best strategy for implementing PCT POC in real-world clinical practice to assess its impact on antibiotic use [3].
• In parallel, she leads an IICT-funded proposal, the "PLUS IS LESS" trial (SNSF grant 33IC30_201300): this multicenter study, conducted across nine Swiss emergency departments, assesses a multimodal algorithm combining point-of-care lung ultrasound and procalcitonin testing to guide antibiotic therapy [4].

Selected publications:

[1] Lhopitallier L, Kronenberg A, Meuwly JY, Locatelli I, Müller Y, Senn N, D’Acremont V, Boillat-Blanco N. Procalcitoninand lung ultrasonography point-of-care testing to determine antibiotic prescription in patients with lower respiratory tract infection in primary care: pragmatic cluster randomized trial. BMJ 2021; 374: n2132. DOI.

[2] Cisco G, Meier AN, Senn N, Mueller Y, Kronenberg A, locatelli I, Knüsli J, Lhopitallier L, Boillat-Blanco N, Marti J. Cost-effectiveness analysis of procalcitonin and lung ultrasonography guided antibiotic prescription in primary care. Eur J Health Econ 2025; 26: 129. DOI.

[3] Wolfensberger A, Gendolla SC, Dunaiceva J, Plüss-Suard C, Niquille A, Nicolet A, Marti J, Powell BJ, Naef R, Boillat-Blanco N, Mueller Y, Clack L. Systematic method for developing tailored strategies for implementing point-of-care procalcitonin testing to guide antibiotic  prescribing in Swiss primary care: a protocol for a mixed-methods participatory approach. BMJ Open 2025; 15: e091285. DOI.

[4] Bessat C, Bingisser R, Schwendinger M, Bulaty T, Fournier Y, Della Santa V, Pfeil M, Schwab D, Leuppi JD, Heigy N, Steuer S, Roos F, Christ M, Sirova A, Espejo T, Riedel H, Atzl A, Napieralski F, Marti J, Cisco G, Foley RA, Schindler M, Hartley MA, Fayet A, Garcia E, Locatelli I, Albrich WC, Hugli O, Boillat-Blanco N. PLUS-IS-LESS project: Procalcitonin and Lung UltraSonography based antibiotherapy in patients with Lower rESpiratory tract infection in Swiss Emergency Departments: study protocol for a pragmatic stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial. Trials 2024; 25: 86. DOI.

Diagnostic accuracy of tools across various healthcare settings

Noémie Boillat Blanco’s research focuses on assessing the diagnostic accuracy and real-world applicability of medical tools across diverse healthcare environments, with the goal of developing effective, context-specific interventions. In Swiss emergency departments, she led a study investigating the performance of lung ultrasound and host biomarkers in predicting COVID-19 patients’ outcomes. The findings demonstrated the strong diagnostic accuracy of lung ultrasound for early risk assessment in COVID-19 [1]. Additionally, her team highlighted sTREM-1 concentrations as a promising tool for risk stratification [2, 3].

Expanding to primary care, she obtained a Eurostars grant (grant 113595/21/35343), to identify and facilitate the implementation of innovative diagnostic tools [4].

Additionally, with funding from the Novartis Foundation, she evaluated the diagnostic performance of biomarkers and clinical data to optimize the diagnosis of pneumonia among nursing home residents. Through research adapted to the needs of different healthcare settings, her goal is to improve diagnostic accuracy, enhance patient care, and contribute to public health advancements.

Selected publications:

[1] Brahier T, Meuwly JY, Pantet O, Brochu Vez MJ, Gerhard Donner H, Hartley MA, Hugli O, Boillat-Blanco N. Lung ultrasonography for risk stratification in patients with COVID-19: a prospective observational cohort study. Clin Infect Dis 2021; 73: e4189. DOI.

[2] Van Singer M, Brahier T, Ngai M, Wright J, Weckman A, Erice C, Meuwly JY, Hugi O, Kain K, Boillat-Blanco N. COVID-19 risk stratification algorithms based on sTREM-1 and IL-6 in emergency department. J Allerg Clin Immunol 2021; 147:99-106. DOI.

[3] Van Singer M, Brahier T, Brochu Vez MJ, Gerhard Donnet H, Hugli O, Boillat-Blanco N. Pancreatic stone protein for early mortality prediction in COVID-19 patients. Crit Care 2021; 25: 267. DOI.

[4] Fischer C, Knüsli J, Lhopitallier L, Tenisch E, Meuwly MG, Douek P, Meuwly JY, D’Acremont V, Kronenberg A, Locatelli I, Mueller Y, Senn N, Boillat-Blanco N. Pulse oximetry as an aid to rule out pneumonia among patients with a lower respiratory tract infection in primary care. Antibiotics 2023; 12: 496. DOI.

Artificial intelligence (AI) to facilitate lung ultrasound implementation for pulmonary infections diagnosis

To support the integration of lung ultrasound as a diagnostic tool for lung infections, Noémie Boillat-Blanco collaborates with the LiGHT laboratory at EPFL and at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, leveraging AI to facilitate lung ultrasound interpretation [1, 2].

Her research team demonstrated the exceptional performance of AI-guided lung ultrasound for tuberculosis diagnosis, achieving a sensitivity of 0.91 (95% CI 0.90-0.96) and specificity 0.85 (95% CI 0.74-0.88), meeting WHO criteria for sputum-free TB triage. Recently, as part of an international consortium, they were awarded an EDCTP Horizon grant to further validate the diagnostic performance of this tool and facilitate its implementation.

She is also exploring the potential of AI-guided lung ultrasound across various patient’s populations and for diagnosing different lung infections, including pneumonia in emergency departments (700-patient cohort) and nursing homes (200-patients cohort, analyses ongoing).

Through this research, she aims to leverage AI to expand access to healthcare and improve the implementation of efficient diagnostic tools, particularly in medical imaging, ultimately enhancing patient care and diagnostic accuracy.

Selected publications:

[1] Suttels V, Wachinou P, Du Toit J, Boillat-Blanco N*, Hartley MA*. Ultrasound for point-of-care sputum-free tuberculosis detection: Building collaborative standardized image-bank. EBioMedicine 2022; 81: 104078. DOI.

[2] Suttels V, Du Toit J, Fiogbe A, Wachinou P, Guendehou B, Alovokpinhou F, Toukoui P, Hada A, Sefou F, Vinasse P, Makpemikpa G, Capo-Chichi D, Garcia E, Brahier T, Keitel K, Ouattara K, Cissoko Y, Beyey S, Mans P, Agodokpessi G, Boillat-Blanco N*, Hartley MA*. Point-of-care ultrasound for tuberculosis management in Sub-Saharan Africa – a balanced SWOT analysis. Int J Infect Dis 2022; 123: 46. DOI.

Team

Dre Véronique Suttels (post-doctorate student)

Dre Cécile Bessat (PhD student)

Dr Thomas Brahier (post-doctorate student)

Noémie Wafler (MD thesis student)

Alexia Roux (MD thesis student)

Nicola De Pasquale (MD thesis student)

Julien Oppliger (master student)

Alizé Erard (master student)

Alumni

Loic Lhopitallier (Research physician)

Florence Hoefler (MD thesis)

Florian Desgranges (MD thesis)

Mathias Van Singer (MD thesis)

Yoris Demars (MD thesis)

José Knüsli (MD thesis)

Sarika Hogendoorn (Master project)

Siméon Schaad (Master project)

Chloé Fischer (Master project)

Inès Chichignoud (Master project)

Joanna Gallay (Master project)

Marc Jeanneret (Master project)