Why Won’t I Share My Medical Records With ChatGPT Health?
This week, OpenAI announced a new feature, ChatGPT Health , that will allow users to upload their medical records and ask health-related questions. However, I certainly won’t be using it, and it might not be the best idea for you either, from both a reliability and privacy standpoint.
The new ChatGPT Health feature will be an isolated tab within the app, disconnected from your chatbot conversation history. This tab will also allow users to connect with various health tracking apps, such as Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, and Peloton, and directly upload medical records.
It’s important to note that this is a very large amount of truly personal information for any tech company, especially one that doesn’t specialize in providing healthcare services. OpenAI states that the ChatGPT Health platform uses “enhanced privacy to protect sensitive data,” but doesn’t employ end-to-end encryption to ensure the security of this data. And while the company claims that data collected through Health isn’t used to train underlying models, it’s impossible to predict whether this will change in the future. Security breaches are also possible (and have occurred in the past ), potentially leaving your medical records at risk.
There’s also the question of whether it’s worth the risk of uploading your data. According to OpenAI’s own data , about 5% of all ChatGPT messages are user inquiries about their health, and ChatGPT (and other LLM tools ) have a nasty habit of providing inaccurate diagnostic information . Perhaps this is why OpenAI states that the new ChatGPT Health feature “is not intended to diagnose or treat.”
There’s currently a waitlist for registration for ChatGPT Health, and this feature will eventually become available to all users. This means that until this feature becomes available, it’s probably best to avoid using the regular version of ChatGPT with questions about your health. At the very least, wait until the enhanced privacy sandbox is available. In the meantime, consider whether it might be wiser to contact your doctor directly if you have questions or concerns about your health.