OpenAI wants you to upload health records to ChatGPT

Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech’s promise. He’s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.

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Millions of people, including me and possibly you, are already asking ChatGPT questions about health. Still others are dumping otherwise inscrutable medical records downloaded from patient portals into the generative AI bot, hoping to glean new insights. 

Now, OpenAI will encourage this behavior with a new health specific tab in the service that the company says has better security and privacy protections so users feel safe pouring sensitive medical data into the bot. In addition to uploading files, users can hook up data from products like Apple Health and Weight Watchers or obtain medical records from providers through b.well’s network. OpenAI promises that it won’t train its models on the data you put into ChatGPT Health. (Reminder: Data that you upload to a consumer service is not covered by HIPAA.)