OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health for personalised wellness support: What it means for users

The OpenAI executive quoted the American Medical Association which revealed that physicians’ use of AI has nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024 with 68 per cent admitting that AI gives them an advantage in being able to care for their patients. Meanwhile, in another survey commissioned by OpenAI, it came to light that three in five adults in the US used AI tools for their health or healthcare over the past three months and 75 per cent of them found it to be very or extremely helpful. 

ChatGPT Health experience

According to OpenAI, health is already one of the most common ways people use ChatGPT, amounting to hundreds of millions of users asking questions about health and wellness each week. 

OpenAI said that ChatGPT Health builds on strong privacy, security, and data controls across ChatGPT with additional, layered protections such as purpose-built encryption and isolation to keep health conversations safe and compartmentalised. The company said that ChatGPT Health comes with a dedicated space within the chatbot meaning all of those files, conversations, and connected apps are stored separately from other chats. OpenAI claims that all information and memories from ChatGPT Health will not flow outside of this space and the conversations will not be used to train its foundation models. 

“You can securely connect medical records and wellness apps to ground conversations in your own health information, so responses are more relevant and useful to you,” the company said in its official blog. Further, it said that the ChatGPT Health has been designed in close collaboration with physicians, and assists people in taking a more active role in understanding and managing their health and wellness. However, the Sam Altman-led AI company has asserted while it supports users, it does not replace care from clinicians. 

ChatGPT Health is not meant for diagnosis and treatment, and it is not to replace medical care in any way. Instead, it is intended to help users navigate everyday questions, and it aims to make the chatbot’s responses more relevant based on a user’s health information. 

Putting users in control

OpenAI has collaborated with digital health platform b.well for health data connectivity infrastructure allowing users to securely connect their medical records for more personalised health AI interactions in ChatGPT Health. The company said that through this partnership, its users can explicitly authorise access within ChatGPT to securely connect their health data and medical records from the US healthcare providers. According to OpenAI, this integration is designed to put consumers in charge of where and how they can safely and securely access their health information.

To get started, users need to sign up for a waitlist to request access to ChatGPT Health. Once access is granted, the feature appears as a dedicated option in the ChatGPT sidebar. OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT Health gradually, with some capabilities, such as connecting medical records, currently limited to the US. The company has said it plans to expand availability over the coming weeks but has not shared a detailed global rollout timeline.