OpenAI to roll out new ChatGPT health feature, with Singapore included in initial access

[SINGAPORE] Artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI has opened a waiting list for ChatGPT Health, a new feature that operates as a dedicated space within its chatbot for health-related queries, with Singapore included in the roll-out.

A small group of users will be granted access in the initial phase after joining the waiting list, with a broader release expected in the coming weeks. Users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans outside the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK are eligible.

ChatGPT Health is “designed to support, not replace, medical care” and is “not intended for diagnosis or treatment”, OpenAI wrote in a blog post on Wednesday (Jan 7).

Instead, the service is positioned as a tool to help users organise and navigate often-fragmented health information, and to address common questions, noted the San Francisco-based company.

These include understanding recent test results, preparing for medical appointments, guidance on diet and workout routines, and weighing the trade-offs of different insurance options based on individual healthcare patterns.

The launch comes as health-related questions have emerged as one of the most common use cases for ChatGPT, with more than 230 million people worldwide asking health and wellness-related questions on the platform each week.

This is part of a broader base of more than 800 million weekly ChatGPT users, based on figures disclosed by the company in December.

To safeguard sensitive information, conversations within ChatGPT Health are siloed from other chats on the platform.

Users’ conversations, connected apps and files in the health space will be stored separately, and data from the service will not be used to train OpenAI’s foundation models.

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OpenAI said the development of ChatGPT Health followed two years of collaboration with more than 260 doctors across 60 countries, aimed at understanding “what makes an answer to a health question helpful or potentially harmful”.

Over that period, the doctors provided feedback on model outputs more than 600,000 times across 30 areas of focus, the company added.

Dr Desmond Wai, a gastroenterologist at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, expects the new service to be “very popular” with users, particularly among patients seeking second opinions, even though it is not intended as a diagnostic tool.

He told The Business Times that it is already common for patients to arrive at consultations armed with information from ChatGPT and other online sources, such as Google searches, and to reference this material when asking questions during visits.

Dr Wai also does not expect the use of such tools to result in poorer health outcomes, including in situations where AI systems hallucinate – a term used to describe the fabrication of facts or statistics.

“From what I understand, such (AI) models tend to be more conservative – I don’t think they will tell the patient: ‘Your tummy pain is not an issue, you don’t need to see a doctor.’ They will tell them to see the doctor,” he said.