OpenAI revealed Wednesday ChatGPT Healtha dedicated health experience within ChatGPT that combines a user’s personal health information with the company’s AI – with the promise of helping people better manage their health and wellbeing.
Below are five things to know about the announcement.
There is a clear demand for this solution
OpenAI reports that more than 230 million people worldwide ask ChatGPT about health and wellness each week. The company’s new service seeks to meet this demand by providing users with a more structured and secure way to interact with health-related information.
“To make an even bigger impact, we need to make it easier for everyone to discover what’s possible with ChatGPT and get the most out of it for their health. For example, it’s a pain to go through several different health systems, figure out how to upload your files, and then upload them all into ChatGPT,” Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI, said in a Tuesday. Sub-stack post.
ChatGPT Health is designed to enable more personalized health conversations
ChatGPT Health is a space dedicated to users’ health conversations where they can connect their medical records, as well as data from wellness apps like Apple Health, Function Health, Peloton and MyFitnessPal.
This gives ChatGPT the ability to offer more relevant and personalized support. For example, users can ask questions to understand recent lab results, get help preparing for a visit to their doctor, or receive daily health tips tailored to their diet, activity level, and medical history.
“ChatGPT Health is another step towards transforming ChatGPT into a personal super-assistant that can help you with information and tools to achieve your goals in any part of your life,” Simo said in his post.
OpenAI also emphasized that the new platform is not intended for medical diagnosis or treatment. The company is positioning it as a support for personal health navigation rather than a clinical service.
The service is designed with confidentiality in mind
OpenAI highlighted that its new offering allows health chats to live in a separate, secure space with enhanced protections, such as encryption and dedicated memory. The company also noted that these health conversations will not be used to train OpenAI’s core models.
OpenAI exploited b.well to serve as the underlying connectivity layer for this new service – allowing ChatGPT Health users to securely link their medical records and other health data to the platform with “consumer-controlled consent,” meaning individuals can decide what information is shared, how it is used and can revoke access at any time, explained Kristen Valdes, CEO of b.well.
“We believe in informed consent. We believe that the consumer is fully responsible and has the right to direct their data as they wish. They also have the right to remove that data,” she said.
In his eyes, this partnership reflects an evolution towards meeting consumers where they already are, as patients. are increasingly turning to large language models to obtain health information between clinical visits.
Valdes said b.well’s role is to give these conversations greater context by allowing users to connect as much or as little of their own health data as they want — helping to reduce what she called “portalitis,” or the fragmentation created by dozens of disconnected patient portals.
Doctors helped guide the development of the new platform
When creating and evaluating ChatGPT Health, OpenAI collaborated with hundreds of doctors around the world to ensure its responses are useful and responsibly worded.
OpenAI said feedback from doctors informs how the platform presents information, including when to encourage users to seek professional care.
Its deployment takes place in stages
The new offering is initially only available to a small group of early adopters, but OpenAI encourages consumers to sign up for a waiting list.
The company said the platform should be widely available in the coming weeks.
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