Key Takeaways:
Health is one of the top reasons people use ChatGPT, with more than 230 million users globally asking health- and wellness-related questions each week. This January, the platform introduced ChatGPT Health, designed in collaboration with physicians, to help individuals navigate their health.
The site is not meant to replace clinician care, nor does it diagnose or offer treatment. Rather, it’s built to help users feel confident, informed, and prepared in understanding their health questions and concerns, using layered protections to ensure the privacy and security of all shared information.
Users can connect medical records and wellness apps so ChatGPT Health can better understand and interpret individual needs. It can give insights into health patterns, advise on diet and workout routines, help prepare for doctor’s appointments, and answer questions related to health insurance. This is all intended to better prepare users for important in-person medical conversations.
More than 260 physicians from 60 countries with various specialties partnered with OpenAI to create ChatGPT Health, providing feedback on over 600,000 model outputs across 30 focus areas. Their medical expertise helped generate clearer responses, such as “How urgently to encourage follow-ups with a clinician, how to communicate clearly without oversimplifying, and how to prioritize safety in moments that matter,” according to an OpenAI press release.
ChatGPT Health uses HealthBench, a framework created by OpenAI and evaluated against clinical standards. It incorporates rubrics written by physicians to help explain lab results, generate questions for appointments, interpret data from wellness apps, and summarize care instructions.
While ChatGPT already allows users to sync apps like AllTrails and Peloton, ChatGPT Health expands the ability to upload files directly or connect fitness apps to the platform. This includes Apple Health for movement, sleep, and activity data; Function for lab test insights; MyFitnessPal for nutrition advice and recipes; and WeightWatchers for personalized meal ideas and diet guidance. Medical records can also be uploaded for interpreting lab results, visit summaries, and clinical histories.
These apps and records allow users to receive more personalized responses based on their own health information. ChatGPT has also partnered with b.well, the largest and most secure network of live health data for US customers, enabling access to trusted US healthcare providers.
Both b.well and the connected fitness and wellness apps meet OpenAI’s privacy requirements and undergo additional security protocols specific to ChatGPT Health.
To further protect user privacy, ChatGPT Health encrypts conversations and files, and includes protections like purpose-built encryption, data isolation, and optional multifactor authentication. ChatGPT Health also has separate memories from ChatGPT, ensuring health and wellness conversations remain compartmentalized.
OpenAI is rolling out the platform to a small group of users with ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, or Pro plans and will begin to expand availability to all web and iOS users in the coming weeks.