OpenAI makes ChatGPT Health available to all U.S. users
Quick Answer
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Health for all U.S.
Quick Take
users over 18, allowing integration of personal health data from various platforms. Despite a lawsuit regarding health advice, the feature aims to enhance user experience with 300 million weekly health queries and improved model performance, including GPT 5.6-Luna surpassing GPT 5.5 on health benchmarks.
Key Points
- ChatGPT Health is now available for U.S. users aged 18 and older.
- Users can integrate data from Apple Health, Epic, and other platforms.
- Weekly health-related queries have increased from 230 million to 300 million.
- GPT 5.6-Luna outperforms GPT 5.5 on OpenAI's HealthBench evaluation.
- OpenAI emphasizes that its services are not for medical diagnosis or treatment.
DeepSignal Analysis
What happened
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Health for U.S. users over 18, allowing integration of personal health data from various platforms. This follows a lawsuit regarding health advice. The feature aims to improve user experience, with health-related queries increasing from 230 million to 300 million weekly.
Key evidence
- OpenAI's ChatGPT Health is now available to all U.S. users over 18, allowing integration of personal health data from platforms like Apple Health and MyFitnessPal.
- The number of health-related queries has risen from 230 million to 300 million weekly, indicating increased user engagement with health topics.
- The latest model, GPT 5.6-Luna, outperforms GPT 5.5 on the HealthBench evaluation, which assesses large language models on health-related queries.
Why it matters
The launch of ChatGPT Health highlights the growing intersection of AI and personal health management. While the feature aims to enhance user experience, it also raises concerns about the reliability of AI-generated health advice, especially in light of ongoing legal challenges. OpenAI's emphasis on user verification and professional consultation underscores the need for caution in using AI for health-related decisions.
📖 Reader Mode
~3 min readOpenAI said today it is making ChatGPT Health, a feature that helps users with health-related queries, available to all U.S.-based users over 18 across all plans. The announcement comes a day after a Florida-based pastor sued the company for giving a near-fatal suggestion not to consult a doctor.
The company started testing the feature through a dedicated hub earlier in January, allowing users to integrate data from other services and their personal information from services such as Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal.
At that time, OpenAI said users were asking 230 million health-related queries each week. That number has now gone up to 300 million.
Users can also integrate their medical records from hospital systems like Epic and Oracle Health, and health platforms like One Medical and Function Health.
OpenAI said earlier that users needed to use the health hub for health-related queries. Now they can choose to draw insights from connected information in the health section in all queries. The company said during the testing it observed that 70% of health-related queries took place outside the dedicated hub. Through this new feature, users can use their health information to get information on food or allergies in the general chat.
The company noted that its models have made progress in answering health-related queries. The company noted that the smallest model from its latest release, GPT 5.6-Luna, outperforms GPT 5.5 on HealthBench evaluation, an open-source benchmark developed by the company to evaluate large language models (LLMs) on health queries. OpenAI said that it doesn’t use any user data to train its model, and it works with physicians to improve its models on health queries.
Despite these performance gains, the company maintains in its terms that its services are “not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition.” The company cited these clauses in responses to the above lawsuit, and also told the New York Times that it is working on making health- or medicine-related answers safer. With the latest roll out, OpenAI said it wants people to verify information and take medical decisions based on professional advice.
Several studies have highlighted that AI bots are not reliable for medical advice. However, this has not deterred companies like Anthropic and Google from launching health-related AI features.
Health in ChatGPT is rolling out to logged-in U.S. users with free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans on the web and iOS this week.
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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.
You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal.
— Originally published at techcrunch.com
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