For millions of people, AI chatbots have become a new front door to health information. More than 230 million people use ChatGPT each week for health and wellness questions. With healthcare now OpenAI’s biggest and fastest-growing use case, the company is making a major push into the sector, rolling out enterprise tools for hospitals and personal health assistants for consumers.

OpenAI has set a bold goal of ensuring that AI “improves health for all humanity,” and Karan Singhal is driving that work. A leading artificial intelligence researcher who previously worked at Google, Singhal joined OpenAI two years ago as head of Health AI and Artificial General Intelligence. His team is focused on improving the quality of ChatGPT’s health-related responses.

In a wide-ranging interview with Executive Editor Heather Landi, Singhal shared his perspective on why healthcare is a strategic priority for OpenAI and how the company is rapidly improving its health capabilities. He makes the case for AI becoming a “silent background companion” for clinicians and patients and explains how it can serve as a bridge in a fragmented healthcare system.

To learn more about the topics in this episode: 

• OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Clinicians, a free AI tool for physicians, NPs and pharmacists
• OpenAI acquires healthcare startup Torch to build out ChatGPT Health
• OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health to connect data from health apps, medical records
• AI chatbot use for health information up 16% from 2024: Rock Health survey
• 40M people use ChatGPT to get answers to healthcare questions, OpenAI says