ChatGPT users who have been utilizing the chatbot for (often dubious) health advice will now have a chatbot specialized just for that.
On Wednesday, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a health-specific segment of the popular AI chatbot with the ability to connect to medical records, wellness apps, and wearables.
“ChatGPT can help you understand recent test results, prepare for appointments with your doctor, get advice on how to approach your diet and workout routine, or understand the tradeoffs of different insurance options based on your healthcare patterns,” OpenAI said in the announcement.
Users can connect apps like Apple Health to share sleep and activity patterns, MyFitnessPal to receive nutrition advice, AllTrails for hiking ideas, Peloton to get workout suggestions, and even Instacart so that ChatGPT can make you a shoppable list based on what diet it thinks you should follow.
OpenAI says it has been working on ChatGPT Health for over two years alongside more than 260 physicians from 60 countries.
ChatGPT Health has not yet fully launched. For now, the company is providing access to only a small group of early users for any final refinements. There is a link to a waitlist to sign up for it, although it doesn’t seem to work at the time of writing.
The medical record integration function is only available in the U.S., but the rest is available globally, except for users in the European Union, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, all of which have very strict digital privacy laws in place.
ChatGPT has been at the center of privacy concerns after a poor design feature made some user queries public and searchable by search engines.
But the company insists that the new offering is safe and protected through purpose-built encryption and isolation, and it has made these privacy guardrails Health’s main differentiator from the regular ChatGPT.
The Health part of ChatGPT is supposed to have “separate memories,” so that the information stays confined to that chat, although the Health chats will be able to access information about you gathered from non-Health chats. Conversations in Health will also not be used to train foundation models.
OpenAI has been slowly upping its investments in the healthcare arena for some time now. In May 2025, OpenAI unveiled HealthBench, a new benchmark to evaluate AI systems’ capabilities, which was used to train ChatGPT Health.
Then, over the summer, the AI giant made a few high-profile hires to its healthcare AI team, including the healthcare business networking tool Doximity’s co-founder, Nate Gross, to lead the co-creation of new healthcare tech with clinicians and researchers.
Around the same time, OpenAI also announced a partnership with Kenya-based primary care provider Penda Health, underscored its latest model GPT-5’s ability to “proactively flag” potential health concerns and create treatment plans while announcing the model, and was named as a partner in a Trump-led private sector initiative to use AI assistants in patient care and allow the sharing of medical records across apps and programs from 60 companies.
It was also over the summer that OpenAI hired its new CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, who has pinpointed healthcare as the AI use case she is most excited about and has since called the launch of Health “really personal” to her.
OpenAI’s big healthcare AI bet is indicative of a growing industry-wide acceptance of AI, despite some concerning cases. The winds of regulation seem to be blowing in healthcare AI’s favor, from Utah okaying AI-prescribed medication renewals to the FDA saying it will regulate wellness software and wearables with a light touch as long as the companies don’t claim their product is “medical grade.”
“We want to let companies know, with very clear guidance, that if their device or software is simply providing information, they can do that without FDA regulation,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary told Fox Business on Tuesday.
But even mere health and wellness suggestions have the capacity to lead to disastrous consequences for users if proven incorrect. ChatGPT has been under considerable heat for that over the past year, especially due to the numerous fatal mental health episodes it has been accused of triggering in the absence of adequate safety controls.
OpenAI has been trying to solidify its product’s place in healthcare alongside the steadily growing investment. Earlier this week, the company published a report claiming that more than 40 million ChatGPT users ask for health advice every single day, and paired the findings with sample policy concepts like asking for full access to the world’s medical data and requesting a clearer regulatory pathway for consumer-focused health AI. The company also said that it is preparing to release a more comprehensive health AI policy blueprint in the coming months.