The company declined to comment on the report. However, recent strategic hires signal a serious push into health-related technology. In June, OpenAI brought on Nate Gross, cofounder of the physician network Doximity, as head of healthcare strategy. In August, former Instagram executive Ashley Alexander joined as vice president of health products.
At the HLTH conference in October, Gross revealed that ChatGPT attracts roughly 800 million weekly active users, with many interacting with the AI to seek medical advice. This growing engagement may have influenced OpenAI’s decision to explore healthcare-focused offerings.
Tech giants have long sought to give consumers more control over their medical information, though with mixed results. Google shuttered its health record service in 2011 due to low adoption, Amazon wound down its Halo fitness tracker in 2023, and Microsoft’s HealthVault platform struggled to gain traction. OpenAI’s entry into this market comes amid these past challenges, highlighting both the opportunity and risks of bringing AI to personal healthcare.
