Laboratory Medicine Blockchain Update: Progress and Applications
Laboratory medicine faces increasing challenges from the digitization of health data, including ensuring the integrity of lab data, secure release of sensitive results, and compliance with strict data protection regulations such as GDPR in Europe. Blockchain technology, as a decentralized, immutable ledger system, offers transformative potential by ensuring transparency, traceability, and resistance to manipulation. In recent years, particularly since 2020, peer-reviewed studies have shown how blockchain enables not only theoretical concepts but also real-world applications in laboratory medicine, such as the secure storage of diagnostic data or collaboration between laboratories and clinics. This analysis highlights advances in the technology and focuses on concrete, implemented applications based on verified scientific papers from databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and IEEE. It underscores how blockchain is making laboratory medicine more efficient, secure, and patient-centered, while breaking down existing barriers such as data silos and trust deficits. A key advancement of blockchain in…
