ChatGPT users who have been using a chatbot to get (often dubious) health advice will now have a dedicated chatbot.
On Wednesday, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a health-specific component of the popular AI chatbot with the ability to connect to medical records, health apps, and wearables.
“ChatGPT can help you understand the latest test results, schedule an appointment with your doctor, get advice on how to approach your diet and exercise routine, or understand the trade-offs of different insurance options based on your health care patterns,” OpenAI said in an announcement.
Users can connect apps like Apple Health to share sleep and activity patterns, MyFitnessPal for nutrition advice, AllTrails for hiking ideas, Peloton for workout suggestions, and Instacart so ChatGPT can create a grocery list for you based on what foods it thinks you should follow.
OpenAI says it has been working on ChatGPT Health for more than two years with more than 260 doctors from 60 countries.
ChatGPT Health is not yet fully launched. Currently, the company is giving access to only a small group of early adopters for any final fix. There is a waitlist link to sign up for, though it doesn’t appear to be active at the time of writing.
The medical record aggregation function is only available in the US, but the rest is available worldwide, except for users in the European Union, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, all of which have strict digital privacy laws in place.
ChatGPT has been at the center of privacy concerns after a flawed design feature made certain user queries public and searchable by search engines.
But the company insists that the new offering is safe and secure with purpose-built encryption and encryption, and has made these privacy protections a key differentiator for regular ChatGPT.
The Health section of ChatGPT must have “separate memories,” so that information is always locked to that conversation, although Health chats will have access to information about you collected in non-Health chats. Health Interviews will also not be used to train basic models.
OpenAI has been steadily increasing its investment in the healthcare arena for some time. In May 2025, OpenAI unveiled HealthBench, a new benchmark to test the capabilities of AI systems, which was used to train ChatGPT Health.
Then over the summer, the AI giant hired its healthcare AI team, including business communication tool Doximity’s founder, Nate Gross, to lead the co-creation of new healthcare technologies with doctors and researchers.
At the same time, OpenAI also announced a partnership with a primary care provider based in Kenya, Penda Health, emphasized its latest GPT-5 model’s ability to “flag” potential health concerns and create treatment plans while announcing the model, and was named as a partner in the Trump-led initiative of the private sector to use AI assistants in patient care and allow the sharing of records in 60 companies across all applications and companies.
It was also in the summer that OpenAI hired its new CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, who identified healthcare as the AI use case he was most excited about and has since called the launch of Life “personal” to him.
OpenAI’s big healthcare AI bet is indicative of AI adoption across the industry, despite some lawsuits. The regulatory wind seems to be blowing in favor of healthcare AI, from Utah allowing AI-powered drug renewals to the FDA saying it will regulate health software and light-touch wearables as long as companies can say their product is “medical grade.”
“We want to let companies know, with clear guidance, that if their device or software provides information, they can do so without FDA regulation,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary told Fox Business on Tuesday.
But even health and wellness suggestions have the potential to lead to disastrous consequences for users if proven wrong. ChatGPT has been under a lot of heat over the past year, mostly because of the many mental health episodes it has been accused of causing without adequate security controls.
OpenAI has been trying to strengthen its product’s position in healthcare and low-growth investments. Earlier this week, the company published a report that said more than 40 million ChatGPT users ask for health advice every single day, and paired the findings with sample policy ideas such as calling for full access to global medical data and calling for a clear regulatory framework for consumer-focused health AI. The company also said it is preparing to roll out a comprehensive AI health policy plan in the coming months.
