OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Health to Bring AI Into Everyday Medical Conversations

OpenAI has unveiled ChatGPT Health, a dedicated healthcare experience inside its flagship chatbot, aiming to give users a more secure and context-aware way to ask medical and wellness questions as global demand for AI health advice surges.

The new feature comes as the company said over 230 million users globally already turn to ChatGPT each week for health-related information.

In a blog post, OpenAI said ChatGPT Health is designed to help people feel “more informed, prepared, and confident” when navigating their health and wellness, from interpreting test results and preparing for doctor visits to understanding diet, exercise and insurance trade-offs.

Unlike general ChatGPT conversations, Health operates in a segregated tab with enhanced privacy protections, including isolated memory so health data stays separate from other chats and is not used to train OpenAI’s broader models.

Users with ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans outside the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK can join a waitlist to access ChatGPT Health, with broader web and iOS availability expected in the coming weeks. Some features, such as medical record integrations and specific app connections, are limited to users in the US.

The model allows users to link medical records and wellness apps such as Apple Health, MyFitnessPal and others so that responses can be grounded in personal data, though OpenAI stresses the system is not a diagnostic tool or a replacement for licensed medical professionals.

OpenAI said it worked with more than 260 physicians across 60 countries and dozens of specialties over the past two years to help shape the product, providing clinical feedback on model outputs across roughly 30 focus areas.

A response to growing AI health demand

Health queries have long been one of the most common use cases for ChatGPT, but until now users have had to pose questions in generic chat sessions without safeguards specific to sensitive information.

With Health, OpenAI said it aims to offer “a dedicated space,” where sensitive conversations can be conducted with stronger privacy and encryption, and where users can view or delete personal health data.

Despite the enhanced controls, OpenAI reiterates that ChatGPT Health is meant to support, not replace clinical care, and will refrain from providing formal diagnosis or treatment advice.

The launch also follows last year’s clarification from the company that ChatGPT should not be used for personalized medical or legal advice in updates that were widely misinterpreted online as a ban on health responses. OpenAI maintained that the core guidelines around sensitive advice remained unchanged.

The move comes as regulators and public health experts debate how to govern generative AI in healthcare. Concerns about safety and reliability have been amplified by internal data showing substantial weekly use of chatbots for discussions that may include serious health and mental health concerns.

For example, OpenAI previously estimated that hundreds of thousands of users may show possible signs of mental health emergencies in a given week on ChatGPT, based on a fraction of its reported 800 million weekly active users.