Healthcare giant Philips has officially launched the Philips Blockchain Lab, a research and development center located in Amsterdam and focused on the emerging technology.

In a post on its website, Philips said that the lab follows six months of exploratory research, and that the goal of the effort is to unite the company’s IT experts, healthcare professionals and blockchain developers to continue this progress.

Philips indicated that it is seeking collaborators and developers to conduct projects, offering a form on the website where users can subscribe to a newsletter or voice their interest in participating in future initiatives.

Notably, the company also hinted at to how it believes blockchain could be applied for healthcare use cases.

Arno Laeven, initiator and head of the Philips Blockchain Lab, said in a statement:

“As a company committed to innovation you need to constantly explore new and emerging technologies and their application in areas where they might have an impact and added value. Our aim is to learn if blockchain technology could potentially add value to the process of data exchange in the healthcare industry.”

The announcement follows the October news that Philips had partnered with blockchain recordkeeping startup Tierion on an unspecified project that examined how the technology could be applied to use cases in healthcare.

Healthcare image via Shutterstock