Carbon materials such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, fullerene, graphite, nanodiamond, carbon nanocones, amorphous carbon, porous carbon among others are important components in many possible applications of these nanomaterials in medicine. We therefore want to give an overview of the synthesis of these nanomaterials and explain how they could be applied in medicine. The application of such materials has shown to be advantageous due to their high inertness towards chemical reactions, due to their high conductivity, due to their high mechanical strength and due to the diversity in which their structures can be combined. The challenge of applying these materials in real medical applications is also discussed.