OpenAI announced that healthcare organizations can now connect their Epic electronic health record (EHR) environments to ChatGPT for Healthcare. Clinicians can ask what changed since a patient’s last visit, which lab results to review before an appointment, and whether there were medication changes or new specialist recommendations; ChatGPT then assembles the answer from the authorized patient record and points back to the supporting chart information. In supported deployments, the integration runs the other way too, embedding ChatGPT directly inside the EHR layout so clinicians never leave the chart.
Epic holds the records of most American hospital patients. The integration is governed on Epic’s terms: authorized context, existing permissions preserved, and organizations decide whether to turn it on.
OpenAI also announced a new Healthcare Public Data plugin that gives ChatGPT dedicated connectors to nine official public healthcare sources (including PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, DailyMed, RxNorm, and CMS Coverage) so teams can verify trial eligibility criteria, medication labels, and coverage policy versions against the authoritative record, rather than searching each source separately. Plugins for SharePoint, Google Drive, Salesforce, and Slack carry the business side, and OpenAI says existing permissions are preserved throughout.
OpenAI says it works with hundreds of physicians across 60 countries and 26 medical specialties who have reviewed more than 700,000 model responses to date. For the EHR integration specifically, physicians evaluated responses across 27 clinical use cases (pre-visit review, clinical timelines, medication review, handoff summaries) and across 4,363 ratings they rated 99.1% of responses safe.
OpenAI is working through the economy one industry at a time. ChatGPT Finance moved in on the tax preparers, consumer ChatGPT Health is going right after health apps, and this release is placing an AI layer over the clinicians’ core information workflow.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen said, “software is eating the world.” He was right. Now, AI is eating the software.
Every company needs a Claw strategy. Do you have one?
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.