OpenAI's ChatGPT Health Plugs Into Epic's Patient Charts

OpenAI has wired ChatGPT into Epic, the electronic health record system that holds data for more than 325 million patients.

Clinicians using the new ChatGPT Health integration can pull appointment notes, lab results, medications and specialist documentation into a chat window without leaving the patient chart, TechCrunch reported. The "integration allows only read-only access to health records, and AI doesn't write anything back."

Alongside it, OpenAI shipped a Healthcare Public Data plug-in that reaches into ClinicalTrials.gov, CMS Coverage, RxNorm, DailyMed and PubMed for trial eligibility, medication identifiers and coverage policies. Organizations that sign Business Associate Agreements can now use ChatGPT Work, Codex, apps and connectors in HIPAA-compliant workflows.

OpenAI puts a safety number on the launch. In an evaluation of 4,300 responses from physicians across 27 clinical use cases, the company says 99.1% were safe, and for each of the five connected data sources more than 93% of responses were rated "good" or better on accuracy. It also puts weekly ChatGPT health-related queries at around 300 million.

UCSF Health is the featured pilot customer. Its president and CEO, Suresh Gunasekaran, said the technology has the potential to reduce time spent synthesizing data and give clinicians more time with patients.

The launch lands in a busy stretch for healthcare AI, coming shortly after the FDA signaled it may weigh clinician-style tests for generative AI medical devices. It's the latest in nearly 350 OpenAI stories we've tracked over the past 90 days.