Prof. Dr. Rudolf Blankart

Carl Rudolf Blankart is Professor of Regulatory Affairs at the KPM Center for Public Management at the University of Bern, Director Regulation at the Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine (sitem-insel), and chairs the Economics Cluster at the University of Bern’s Multidisciplinary Center for Infectious Diseases (MCID). He is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Bern. He holds a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the Technische Universität Berlin (Dipl.-Ing.) and a doctorate from the Universität Hamburg (Dr. rer. pol.). Prior to his appointment at the University of Bern, he held positions at the Universität Hamburg and was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Health Policy at Imperial College London and, as a Harkness/B. Braun Stiftung Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund, at the Brown University School of Public Health in the US. He is a fellow of the SCIANA Health Leaders Network.

Dr. Blankart’s research is situated at the intersection of medicine, management, and law, and aims to improve the pathway from idea to patient. His central question is how regulatory and reimbursement frameworks can be designed so that innovative medicinal products and medical devices reach patients. He examines this through the lens of regulatory conditions for the development and availability of new antibiotics in Switzerland, the integration of newborn screening and digital technologies into European health systems, and the impact of regulatory requirements on the medical device industry. He leads the University of Bern’s participation in European research consortia such as Screen4Care (IMI) and COMED (Horizon 2020) and is a founding member of the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes and Needs in Care (ICCONIC), supported by the Commonwealth Fund and the Health Foundation. He serves as Associate Editor of Health Policy. Dr. Blankart translates his research into practice as president of the Swiss Round Table on Antibiotics and by contributing his health policy and regulatory expertise to public and private organizations.