OpenAI dropped the news on Wednesday that it’s launching ChatGPT Health, a dedicated platform where users can discuss their health concerns with the chatbot, and it’s taking steps to make sure those chats stay private.
You’ll be able to choose to connect your medical records and wellness apps to receive more tailored advice, lab test insights, and more – think Apple Health, Function, MyFitnessPal, and a variety of others. All this is possible if you’re using the free, Go, plus, or Pro plan (not if you’re in the EEA, Switzerland, or the UK)
ChatGPT Health builds on the strong privacy, security, and data controls across ChatGPT with additional, layered protections designed specifically for health — including purpose-built encryption and isolation to keep health conversations protected and compartmentalized
OpenAI
Over 230 million a week ask health-related questions, so they’re keen to point out this new tool is meant to support medical care, not replace it in any way.
The company has made a big point about all the things that are built into this feature to protect your privacy and security
- Health has its own memory, which keeps all your sensitive health data locked away
- Conversations in Health aren’t used to train the AI models
- If you try to have a health-related conversation on the normal ChatGPT, you’ll get told to switch to Health
- nothing is shared between Health and regular conversations
- You have to permit health apps to talk to your health data (even if you’ve linked them to ChatGPT already)
- All the apps that are part of Health meet OpenAI’s security requirements (meaning they only collect what they need and get extra reviewed)
They’ve also run the model that powers ChatGPT health against a set of clinical standards (which you can read about on HealthBench, which they launched a bit earlier this year)
This means the model does a good job with the kinds of tasks that people actually need help with – like explaining test results, talking about care instructions, and that kind of thing
This all comes after a bit of a row with Google and Character, who are being sued over some pretty serious allegations about their health advice – and a report this week just showed a 19-year-old died after getting bad health advice from ChatGPT