OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Health, a dedicated space within its platform designed specifically so ChatGPT users can have conversations related to health and wellness in a more private and secure environment. The company appears to be responding to significant user demand; by OpenAI's own reports, over 230 million people already ask health and wellness questions on ChatGPT every week.

The new feature compartmentalizes health discussions from regular ChatGPT conversations, ensuring medical context stays separate from everyday chats. Users in select regions can securely connect medical records and wellness apps—including Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal—allowing ChatGPT to provide more personalized responses based on actual health data. For example, users can ask about cholesterol trends, prepare for doctor appointments, or get advice on diet and exercise routines tailored to their medical history.

ChatGPT Health operates with enhanced privacy protections, including purpose-built encryption and data isolation. Interactions that happen within Health aren't used to train OpenAI's models. And although conversations in ChatGPT Health may draw from relevant data from non-health chat sessions, information from ChatGPT Health will not flow back into standard chats. The feature was developed with input from over 260 physicians across 60 countries, who provided feedback on more than 600,000 model outputs.

However, the launch raises familiar concerns about AI in healthcare. It is now widely accepted that, roughly stated, large language models have no understanding of what is true or correct, as their capabilities only enable them to provide the most likely answer to a query given the available data. This is why many researchers now believe that hallucinations are inevitable, which in turn raises the question of how reliable LLMs can be in applications involving sensitive topics such as healthcare. OpenAI's own terms state the service "is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition", and the announcement claims that the goal of ChatGPT Health is to "help people take a more active role in understanding and managing their health and wellness—while supporting, not replacing, care from clinicians."

The feature is available through a waitlist for ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, and Pro users outside the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK. Medical record integrations are currently US-only.