OpenAI Targets Healthcare with New AI Tools
OpenAI has unveiled ChatGPT Health, a platform designed for enterprise health AI applications. Alongside this, the company launched its HealthBench initiative to establish new standards for benchmarking AI performance in clinical settings, aiming to accelerate adoption in regulated environments.
- The global AI in healthcare market is projected to grow significantly, with one forecast estimating it will reach over $900 billion by 2035, up from around $38 billion in 2025. This growth is attracting substantial venture capital, with AI-enabled healthcare startups in the US raising an average of $34.4 million per round in the first half of 2025, an 83% premium over non-AI startups. - OpenAI's HealthBench was developed with a global cohort of 262 physicians from 60 countries to address shortcomings of previous benchmarks that relied on standardized tests. It uses 5,000 simulated, multi-turn medical conversations and over 48,000 physician-written criteria to evaluate models on nuanced aspects like communication quality and context-seeking, rather than just factual recall. - The enterprise platform, "OpenAI for Healthcare," is a suite of HIPAA-compliant tools that includes "ChatGPT for Healthcare" and an API for developers. Early adopters of the platform in the U.S. include major institutions like Boston Children's Hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. - The platform is designed to integrate into existing clinical workflows, with use cases like summarizing patient charts, drafting discharge instructions, and generating referral letters. Companies like Abridge, Ambience, and EliseAI are already using the API to power their own custom healthcare applications. - While OpenAI is a major player, the health-tech ecosystem in Turkey is also seeing activity from local founders. For example, Taylan Ozdemir Aydin, a graduate of Robert College and Princeton, secured $1 million in investment for Flyway Health, an AI startup focused on data analysis for the pharmaceutical industry. - The broader Turkish startup scene includes AI and healthtech companies that have attracted venture funding, such as PhiTech Bioinformatics, which uses AI for rare disease diagnostics, and Albert Health, a voice-based AI assistant for medication management. Venture funds like Diffusion Capital Partners are specifically focused on deep-tech opportunities within the country. - The push for better benchmarking is a response to AI models performing well on standardized exams like the USMLE, which proved to be a misleading indicator of readiness for real-world clinical practice. HealthBench aims to create a more realistic standard by evaluating AI on its ability to handle complex, open-ended scenarios that mirror actual patient and clinician interactions. - VC investment in healthcare AI has shown cyclical trends, peaking in 2021 before dipping in 2023 and rebounding in 2024. Despite a broader slowdown in VC fundraising, 2025 saw more mega-deals (over $300M) in healthcare AI than any previous year, indicating strong investor confidence in market-leading platforms.
