New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, along with the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare, announced the opening of the Center of Biomedical Blockchain Research on Tuesday, July 24.
“There is a lot of excitement around the possibilities for blockchain technology in healthcare,” said Joel Dudley, PhD, executive vice president of precision health at Mount Sinai. “However, we still have lots of hard work ahead to identify the most salient features of blockchain technologies to solve real-word healthcare problems.”
The center will examine applications for blockchain, “a distributed, decentralized secure database system originally developed for Bitcoin, to solve problems in health care and medical science,” according to a Mount Sinai release. Researchers will aim to conduct evaluations of blockchain-enabled solutions, provide partnerships with companies working in the technology and build and test systems within the Mount Sinai Health System.
“At Mount Sinai, we bring to the table deep expertise in biomedical data, machine learning, and data governance. This experience will allow us to address many of the most promising uses for blockchain in biomedicine with the goal of improving healthcare delivery and reducing costs,” said Noah Zimmerman, PhD, assistant professor of genetics and genomic sciences.
Companies are already investigating blockchain as a way of encouraging drug development, expanding access to healthcare and improving quality control.
Nicholas joined TriMed in 2016 as the managing editor of the Chicago office. After receiving his master’s from Roosevelt University, he worked in various writing/editing roles for magazines ranging in topic from billiards to metallurgy. Currently on Chicago’s north side, Nicholas keeps busy by running, reading and talking to his two cats.