OpenAI has made ChatGPT Health available to all users in the United States aged 18 and over, significantly expanding a feature that lets the chatbot answer health-related questions by pulling insights from connected medical records, fitness apps, and wearable-device data. The rollout, announced on July 23, 2026, covers every subscription tier, including the free plan.
The launch deepens OpenAI's push into consumer healthcare at a moment of intensifying competition across the AI industry, which you can follow through our breaking AI news coverage. The company first began testing a dedicated health hub in January, allowing users to connect data from services such as Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal.
Connecting Medical Records
With the wider release, users can now integrate their medical records from major hospital systems including Epic and Oracle Health, as well as health platforms like One Medical and Function Health. Previously, users were required to route health questions through the dedicated hub. OpenAI said it observed during testing that roughly 70% of health-related queries took place outside that hub, prompting the decision to surface connected health information across all conversations.
That means a user can now ask, in a general chat, whether a restaurant menu item contains an allergen and have ChatGPT factor in a connected profile of known allergies. OpenAI also reported strong demand: users now submit around 300 million health-related queries each week, up from 230 million when testing began.
Benchmark Gains and Model Improvements
OpenAI said its models have made measurable progress on health tasks. According to the company, GPT 5.6-Luna, the smallest model in its latest release, outperforms the earlier GPT 5.5 on HealthBench, an open-source benchmark OpenAI developed to evaluate large language models on health-related questions.
The company emphasized that it does not use personal user data to train its models and said it works with physicians to refine how the system handles medical queries. These safeguards are central to OpenAI's pitch that ChatGPT can be a useful health companion rather than a substitute for professional care.
A Launch Shadowed by Litigation
The rollout arrived one day after a Florida-based pastor sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT gave a near-fatal suggestion not to consult a doctor, as reported by TechCrunch. The timing underscores the legal and reputational risks that come with positioning a general-purpose chatbot as a source of health guidance.
SiliconANGLE noted that the launch landed amid that legal challenge, highlighting how aggressively OpenAI is moving into consumer health despite unresolved questions about liability. OpenAI has pointed to its terms of service, which state that its services are "not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition," and told The New York Times it is working to make health- and medicine-related answers safer.
The Broader Race for AI in Health
ChatGPT Health places OpenAI in direct competition with other technology giants pursuing healthcare applications. Rivals including Google and Anthropic have separately unveiled enterprise-grade tools designed for clinical documentation and HIPAA-compliant workloads, framing those products as assistants for medical professionals rather than consumer-grade diagnostic tools.
OpenAI's bet is different: it is bringing health features directly to everyday users, betting that the convenience of a single conversational interface, enriched with personal medical data, will drive engagement. The 300-million-queries-per-week figure suggests the demand is already substantial.
Whether regulators and courts will tolerate that ambition remains the open question. Health is among the most heavily regulated sectors in the United States, and consumer-facing AI tools that interpret medical records sit in a legal gray area that lawmakers are only beginning to address.
For now, OpenAI is leaning into the opportunity, betting that strong usage growth and voluntary safety measures will outpace the legal headwinds.
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