OpenAI and Anthropic deepen interest in health data
After ChatGPT Health, OpenAI is taking over a health app. Anthropic is now also offering Claude for Healthcare.
(Image: TippaPatt/Shutterstock.com)
The healthcare sector promises to be lucrative: After OpenAI already launched an AI health assistant, the company has now bought the startup behind the AI health app Torch. Anthropic also offers an AI health assistant.
The acquisition of Torch is reported to have cost OpenAI $100 million in company shares. $60 million is said to have been paid directly, with the rest in shares for employee retention, writes The Information. Torch has only four employees. Torch is a service that aggregates and analyzes health data from various sources. The founders speak of a “medical memory.” For analysis, Torch already relies on OpenAI's models.
Now, the data from the app is to be linked with that of ChatGPT Health, writes OpenAI in a post on X. Doctor's visits, findings, results, and diagnoses, as well as symptoms and complaints, everything is fed into the service. For users, this should result in the best possible healthcare because no detail remains untouched.
Claude for Healthcare – Anthropic's Health Assistant
Anthropic is now following OpenAI's lead. With Claude for Healthcare, the company also offers a health assistant with a similar scope. Anthropic, like OpenAI, says their services are HIPAA-compliant – the US standard for health data security. The data will not be used for training AI models, of course. However, the companies have access to it, which does not preclude later or other uses.
Videos by heise
Claude for Healthcare can be linked with existing health services such as HealthEx and Function Health. Apple Health and Android Health are to follow. In addition to the user's data, the service also has several sources available to compare information, including more than 35 million publications from PubMed, the collection of the US National Institutes of Health, and a database for diseases, the International Classification of Diseases. For this, Claude uses so-called connectors, which are the links to predefined sources. Claude for Healthcare is therefore intended to be helpful not only for patients but also to support medical staff, for example, in finding information faster. In the USA, Claude for Healthcare also helps with submitting applications.
(emw)
