Introduction
Nice to have you back for another episode of TJ’s Technology Tuesday, Digital for Productivity. What have I brought you today? Today I brought you an innovation from OpenAI, namely ChatGPT: Health is here. I don’t know if you’ve noticed. The blog post came in on January 7th.
ChatGPT Health: The new health AI from OpenAI
OpenAI says that there is simply an area of health where many people ask ChatGPT and say: “Can you help me?” And the idea is that you then have a specialized AI that is specialized precisely for this, which then does not answer questions on other topics, but exclusively on the topic of health, fitness, nutrition. I think that’s a pretty good idea, because those who have known me for a while know that I always say: “Less is more.” So an AI that is specialized in one area is always better than a field, forest and meadow AI. So if we were to narrow this down even further to the medical field, then if I had a specific liver problem, I would ideally want to have an AI that is only trained for the liver and not for everything. This brings us to the area of conflict between the family doctor, the general practitioner who can classify everything, and the specialist.
What is the main idea of ChatGPT Health
The idea here is that both the family doctor and the specialist are covered. I don’t have access yet, because you get access to it if you’re in the USA, but it’s not yet available in the European Union. You can’t sign up for the waiting list yet either. But as soon as it’s available, I’ll definitely take a look at it and give you some feedback. Yes, what’s really interesting? And I say, let’s take a look at the videos that are included on this page. I think they’re very, very well done. Let’s take a look at them and listen to them together.
(start of English videos)
I am trying to figure out the balance of mom life and taking care of myself.
I’m I’ve got 15 minutes and I want to squeeze in a workout. What can I do with a set of 10-pound dumbbells? When you live with chronic pain, they think it’s all about symptom management. For me, a lot of that is also mindset management. I’m Having an endo flare up today, what are some simple things I can do to help me feel better? I have eczema in the spaces that I’m in, like pageants. It’s important that I show up looking my best. When you find out that your child has cancer, you feel helpless. Your mind is just spinning with what the possibilities are.
Everything changed right away.
It became really important to me to understand my CAT scan results before I talked to my doctor. I felt like if I understood, I would be more of an active participant in my treatments.
Oh, that’s cute. Are there any eczema triggers in this? We’re going to sprinkle in a few easy moves to get that heart rate up, all while keeping it real and mom friendly. Of course, you go to the doctor and they prescribe medication.
But there is so much more that I can do to help with my care as well. Enjoy. I can take a picture of the plate before and after the meal, and it will calculate the calories and the inflammation score for that meal.
We have a follow-up appointment. Your time with experts can be very limited. So we would go in our with questions to make sure that we would get the most out of those conversations.
I track all my symptoms, so I actually invented a metric called burtness, which was how much of myself am I feeling?
Knowing that I always have that care in my hands. It gives me confidence to go out for new opportunities. It allowed us to really feel like we have the facts, and our doctor is giving us his expertise, his experience, his gut instinct.
My doctor’s appointments They have evolved much more into action planning than they have information gathering. Come on. I think helping others is all about giving them the tools they need to help them heal, because empowered patients, they have better health outcomes.
(end of English videos)
I think that’s a very, very intelligent approach. Of course, the first question is always: “Wait a minute, can I just upload my medical data? Because that’s highly confidential data.” And that’s exactly the issue where I say you really should be very, very careful. Because on the page – and I’m happy to add the link to the episode – it is of course pointed out that data protection is taken into account and everything else. But health data is simply highly sensitive. And against this background, I would recommend that if it is available and if you use it, then I would, for example, as you say: “Gee, I’ve got some recent blood results that I’ve received, I’d like him to analyze them”, to anonymize them beforehand. That means that wherever your name is on it, wherever your address is on it, you anonymize it with other data. If it’s PDF data, for example, you can do this wonderfully by putting something black on it. With the PDF Expert, if you are a PDF user, you can even edit it destructively or not only put something black on it, but you can also really bleach it. You can also use the Adobe product, Adobe Acrobat.
Pay attention to data protection issues
So I would definitely do that, that you blacken something like that accordingly. What is interesting is that, as I said, there will of course be the opportunity to include a note here, I’ll include it here again so that we can see it again, the note that there is a separate area for health, with data protection and security naturally developed as the top priority. Naturally, Americans have a slightly different understanding of this than we Germans and Europeans. What is interesting is that people say: “Okay, I have my own area here and can also use information from the other chat if necessary. I also have protection mechanisms and controls here. And what’s really interesting here: I also have the option of connecting patient records, wellness apps and other apps. So something like Apple Health is also explicitly mentioned here. For me, that would always be the point where I would say, okay, I would probably rather work on the Apple Intelligence functionalities and the Health app, because Apple’s approach is always to say, on-device if possible and with a much greater focus on data protection and data security.
What are the benefits for patients?
Yes, the functionality here was also developed again with doctors. So the whole thing should be really exciting in terms of functionality, so that you can say: “I have 30 focus areas that I have included here, with assessment frameworks and so on.” Yes, what will it look like then? It will then look like this: as soon as you have access, you will be able to apply via the waiting list, but not yet within Germany. Then I’ll have the opportunity to see: “Okay, Health, how are you feeling?” You can see here that I can connect my medical records there. I can understand lab results. And there are already many people who upload their lab results. As I said, I would always recommend anonymizing them beforehand. So here you have the option of linking medical records, Apple Health, so that I can say, for example, dietary suggestions, fitness, Weight Watchers, all these things. And then I can chat, just like you saw in the video earlier, practically about the topic of health and customize the whole thing. It’s very interesting, we’re going to look at another video here, so to say: How to prepare for the doctor with ChatGPT help.
Let’s take another look at that, because I think that’s a very intelligent way to prepare for a consultation with a doctor. You see here, the idea is that I can go into the chat and then say: “What’s wrong? I have an appointment. What questions should I ask?” And I think that’s quite intelligent and just like we heard earlier, where the doctor says: “I prefer to have informed patients”, where patients say: “I may not have much time.” And here again, as I said, not always translatable one-to-one of course. And of course there is also much more pressure on this topic in the USA, because the healthcare system is not covered by insurance in the same way as it is here in Europe. So here too, the topic of workout routines, for example, means that I can get recommendations. We also saw it again earlier. In other words, you can see the individual options on the page. In other words, I can say here: I’m trying to go back to work.
What can I do? We saw one earlier: Mom-friendly, with the baby carriage on her arm. How can I do gymnastics? In other words, here again is the idea that ChatGPT has, OpenAI: you want to become the gateway to the Internet. And you have just researched that health is one of the biggest topics where people go to Google. Against this background, it is of course highly relevant in this area. So here, too, with the wellness plan, I’m going to say that for this topic, you can see the individual areas that are presented here. I have just started to do something here. Give me a realistic exercise suggestion that I can do. And then he says: “Man, I’ll see what it looks like in Apple Health and I’ll make the suggestion based on that. Always with the hint to combine Apple Health with ChatGPT, as Jörg Schieb rightly pointed out, you shouldn’t be completely insensitive and be a little careful about what data you put in there. So please don’t do the whole thing here without reflection. The idea is that this is just the beginning. There is the option of registering for a waiting list.
If you click on it here, it still says it is not available for business accounts and in the region. If it is available, you are welcome to test it, but as I said, please don’t be uncritical. Technically, as you know, as I always say, first switch on your brain, then the technology. And health data is even more sensitive than financial data. So with that in mind, please don’t just blindly put things out there.
How the competition (Apple & Google) reacts
There’s also news on the subject of Apple, perhaps as a small update, maybe you’ve noticed. There is always this saying “Alexa is like Siri only with a high school diploma”, alluding to the lack of quality of Siri, and Apple has probably realized this in the meantime and has now signed a cooperation agreement with Google and will operate Siri on the basis of Google’s AI. And Google Gemini is very, very powerful, and the approach will not be that the requests are practically forwarded to Google, but similar to what Microsoft does, also with the Open AI models, that they are installed on Apple’s data centers and will therefore be part of the Apple security universe. With this in mind, we would like to reiterate our advice: always check again before releasing any data.
You can already type in ChatGPT in the settings on the iPhone, i.e. OpenAI. But then the data is forwarded to OpenAI today. If you then have it with Google, it will be installed on Apple’s servers, which in my view is a much better solution.
Conclusion
Yes, with this in mind, let’s take another look beyond the private sphere. So the topic of health is certainly also relevant to you in your private life. And if you have any questions, just post them in the comments, even afterwards. The TJ Technology Tuesday is always live, on Tuesday from 12:45 to 13:15. It is then automatically available as a recording on LinkedIn and is also available as a podcast on Apple iTunes and the usual podcast readers. And you can also watch the whole thing again on YouTube. So choose your favorite channel and, as always, switch on your brain first, then your technology.
Yours, Thorsten Jekel.
Also available in: Deutsch
