OpenAI Rolls Out ChatGPT for Hospitals

OpenAI has launched “OpenAI for Healthcare,” a set of enterprise AI products designed to help hospitals and healthcare organisations deploy artificial intelligence (AI) securely within regulated clinical environments, the company said on Thursday.

The launch includes ChatGPT for Healthcare, a hospital-focused version of its AI assistant, and expanded support for HIPAA-compliant use of the OpenAI API, which already powers a wide range of healthcare software tools. The offering is being rolled out to major US healthcare systems, including AdventHealth, Baylor Scott & White Health, Boston Children’s Hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, HCA Healthcare, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

This comes after its recent launch of the ChatGPT Health tab, designed in collaboration with physicians to answer health- and wellness-related questions, where Open AI said that globally over 23 crore (230 million) people ask ChatGPT health related questions every week. 

What’s New

Unlike consumer-facing AI tools, OpenAI for Healthcare is built for institutional deployment, allowing hospitals, not individual clinicians—to control how AI is used. OpenAI said the platform provides a secure, enterprise-grade foundation that supports HIPAA compliance, addressing one of the main barriers that has slowed AI adoption inside healthcare organisations.

“Our early work with a custom OpenAI-powered solution allowed us to move quickly, prove value in a secure environment, and establish strong governance foundations,” said John Brownstein, Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.

According to the company, ChatGPT for Healthcare is designed to support clinical, administrative, and research workflows while ensuring patient data remains under organisational control and is not used to train OpenAI’s models.

Why It Matters

Healthcare systems are under increasing strain as demand rises and clinicians spend significant time on administrative tasks. While physician use of AI tools has accelerated—nearly doubling in a year, according to the American Medical Association, many hospitals have been slow to adopt AI formally due to privacy, compliance, and governance concerns.

OpenAI said its healthcare platform is intended to close that gap by enabling hospitals to deploy AI at scale and under oversight, rather than relying on informal or fragmented use by individual staff.

“Ensuring the responsible use of artificial intelligence is paramount to meeting our standards for patient safety and clinical effectiveness,” said Tanya Townsend, Senior Vice President at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. “AI has the potential to simplify administrative workflows and allow care teams to focus more fully on patients.”

Industry observers say the move reflects a broader shift in healthcare, where AI is increasingly being treated as core infrastructure rather than an experimental tool.

How It Works

ChatGPT for Healthcare runs in a secure organisational workspace with role-based access controls, audit logs, and single sign-on using hospital credentials. Hospitals can integrate the system with internal documents—such as care pathways, clinical guidelines, and operational policies—so AI responses align with institution-approved standards.

The system can retrieve and summarise medical information with transparent citations from peer-reviewed research and clinical guidelines, allowing clinicians to verify sources quickly. OpenAI said this supports evidence-based reasoning while keeping clinicians responsible for final decisions.

"At Cedars-Sinai, we are applying AI to reduce administrative burdens and augment clinical reasoning, giving our care teams more time for meaningful patient connection,” said Craig Kwiatkowski, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Cedars-Sinai.

Hospitals are using the tool for tasks such as clinical documentation, discharge summaries, patient instructions, prior authorisation support, and administrative correspondence, according to OpenAI.

API Access For Healthcare Software

Alongside ChatGPT for Healthcare, OpenAI continues to provide HIPAA-eligible API access for developers building healthcare applications. Companies such as Abridge, Ambience, and EliseAI use OpenAI models to power tools for ambient clinical documentation, patient chart summarisation, and appointment scheduling.

Eligible customers can apply for a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with OpenAI, a requirement for handling protected health information under US law.

Models And Evaluation

All products under OpenAI for Healthcare are powered by GPT-5.2 models, which the company said were evaluated through physician-led testing across real-world clinical scenarios. OpenAI said it has worked with more than 260 licensed physicians across 60 countries, reviewing hundreds of thousands of model outputs to inform safety measures and performance improvements.

What This Signals

The launch underscores how AI adoption in healthcare is shifting from experimental use to institutional deployment, as hospitals seek tools that can reduce administrative burden, improve consistency of care, and meet strict regulatory requirements.

“Healthcare is at an important inflection point, and trusted innovators and clinical leaders have the responsibility to shape what comes next,” said Pete McCanna, Chief Executive Officer of Baylor Scott & White Health. “Together, we are putting AI to work to help care teams manage complexity and improve outcomes.”

OpenAI said it plans to continue refining its healthcare products based on real-world use and feedback from clinical partners.