Opinion: Blockchains for biomedicine and health care are coming. Buyer: be informed

In a First Opinion piece on how blockchain technologies could affect health care and the life sciences, its landscape map included 48 projects covering areas like decentralized health records and data marketplaces. Just six months later, the map has tripled in size, covering nearly 150 projects that have raised more than $660 million in private and blockchain-funded (crypto) markets.

While a blockchain health care unicorn has yet to be crowned, the health care industry has seen substantial interest from developers and investors. The dizzying pace has made it difficult to assess what is going on in this space. That’s why Elektra Labs, a startup backed by the National Science Foundation I-Corps, joined forces with the newly-formed Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to create a dataset and accompanying framework for understanding and tracking developments in health care and biomedical blockchains.

At its core, a blockchain is a digital ledger (similar to a spreadsheet) in which transactions are recorded chronologically and openly. The ledger is decentralized, with multiple copies