While ChatGPT Health is an extension of the existing chatbot, offering a space dedicated for health, the latter aims to automate workflows for healthcare organizations, a niche where Indian healthtech firms have attracted investor interest.
These products could likely disrupt the patient care landscape in India and impact nascent startups working on the same solutions.
So, what does this really mean? Mint explains.
What’s new?
ChatGPT Health allows users to input their medical records and lab tests, ask health-related questions, integrate health wearables and wellness apps and even track their GLP-1 usage. The tool helps users understand lab results, prepare for doctor appointments and design diet and workout plans.
There’s a waitlist, and users with ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans outside of the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the UK are eligible.
ChatGPT for Healthcare, on the other hand, offers high-quality responses and relevant medical research for clinicians and researchers to help them diagnose patients faster. It also targets organisations for administrative use-cases, with products like shared templates for common tasks such as drafting discharge summaries, patient instructions, clinical letters, and prior authorization support.
ChatGPT for Healthcare has already been rolled out in some leading US institutions like Boston Children’s Hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, and University of California, San Francisco.
How will this impact patients?
Actually, using ChatGPT for health is not a new phenomenon. In a blog post, OpenAI said health is one of the most common ways people use the chatbot. Over 230 million people ask health and wellness-related questions every week.
However, clinicians and researchers have warned of the risks of biases when using AI systems for health advice, especially around mental health, eating disorders or drug-use guidance.
However, clinicians and researchers have warned of the risks of biases when using AI systems for health advice, especially around mental health, eating disorders or drug-use guidance.
A few years ago, until AI became a go-to tool, doctors would tire of people consulting Google or WebMD and then approaching them with their minds already made up. The shift is simple, instead of Googling symptoms, they will now just ChatGPT them.
To be clear, most companies in the healthtech space offer services for health triaging, and not diagnosis, and say so in their terms and conditions as well as the chatbot interfaces that patients use. OpenAI says the same thing in its blog post: “Health is designed to support, not replace, medical care. It is not intended for diagnosis or treatment.”
Then, there are also concerns around data privacy. ChatGPT says Health is “built as a dedicated space with added protections for sensitive health information” and information uploaded to health will not be used to train models.
However, experts have time and again cautioned users over handing over private and sensitive data to AI firms without reading the fine-print and over quiet changes to policies.
Who are the other players in the sector?
Several healthtech firms in the US and in India have raised money to address some of the issues that OpenAI is solving with ChatGPT Health.
In India, many companies have opted to be vertical solutions providers. Companies are targeting specific parts of the patient lifecycle either to make it more efficient or redefine how patients and doctors interact.
Eka Care, backed by Hummingbird Ventures, 3one4 Capital and Speciale Invest, is looking to build electronic medical records for patients, thereby ensuring doctors across India can access their history without juggling through papers.
Qure.ai specializes in using AI to automate interpretation of radiology exams for early detection of lung cancer, tuberculosis and stroke, but also has another product called AIRA, that acts as a transcription bot. Similarly, Jivi.ai uses an AI agent for initial triaging of symptoms before connecting patients with a doctor, and also does lab report and x-ray assessments, and more.
In the US, healthcare-related transcription companies raised large swathes of money last year. Ambience Healthcare raised $243 million from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Oak HC/FT. Similarly, Abridge raised $300 million in their Series E, led by a16z and Khosla Ventures, as did Elise AI with a $250 million round from a16z with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Sapphire Ventures. Nable raised $70 million in June 2025 to expand their AI for clinician workflows while Heidi Health raised a $65 million Series B from Point72 Private Investments.
Notably, both in the US and India, it can be seen that most of these companies are B2B, with very few in India targeting the consumer segment. Experts say this is so primarily because monetisation is a challenge, whether it’s the Indian or the US market. Especially in India, tapping the consumer in a segment more reactive than proactive comes with dealing with price-sensitive nature of the market. Profit pools remain in enterprise interventions, whether it’s about selling software to hospitals, specialty diagnostics or insurance.
What does it mean—for users and the industry?
Despite warnings from OpenAI, ChatGPT has already been a source of medical advice for many prior to the release of ChatGPT Health. However, with this product, the company is essentially saying, we’ve fixed the issues there might have been, go ahead and use our products for health.
In India, while doctors have warned of patients ChatGPTing their symptoms, medicine is still high trust. Consumers have a preference to speak with doctors in person or over the phone. It might take a while before ChatGPT Health makes a meaningful dent in India.
Additionally, medicine in India and by extension, symptoms of illnesses and diseases, would display very differently from the rest of the world.
On the part of doctors, they have flagged concerns over misdiagnoses, patients self-diagnosing using AI or on delays in seeking medical help. In its blog, OpenAI says ChatGPT health is designed to help users navigate medical care and not replace it.
Regarding the enterprise side, OpenAI is entering a new industry and is exploring another way to de-risk its revenue streams. However, for most B2B companies in the healthtech space, it’s a warning that a larger player can take their vertical solution and do it better.
Some large US healthtech startups, such as Abridge, Ambience and Elise, already use the OpenAI API to support their workflows and tech ecosystems.
OpenAI for Healthcare also includes access to foundational models built for healthcare workflows, making much of the work that startups are doing on their own, obsolete.
While most B2B healthtech companies already use OpenAI’s APIs for their workflows, the company’s entry in healthcare will mean startups will have to increasingly think of how their products stand out, while offering better pricing, more efficient solutions and core IP-related differentiation.
Fundamentally, whether they’re at the early-stage or the late stage, startups will have to rethink how they’re approaching issues in medical triaging, nutrition, fitness training, rehab, and mental health.
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