[SINGAPORE] Artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI has opened a waitlist for ChatGPT Health, a new feature that operates as a dedicated space within its chatbot for health-related queries, with Singapore included in the rollout.

A small group of users will be granted access in the initial phase after joining the waitlist, with a broader release expected in the coming weeks. Users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans outside the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK are eligible.

ChatGPT Health is “designed to support, not replace, medical care” and is “not intended for diagnosis or treatment”, OpenAI wrote in a blog post on Wednesday (Jan 7).

Instead, the service is positioned as a tool to help users organise and navigate often fragmented health information, and to address common questions, the San Francisco-based company wrote.

These include understanding recent test results, preparing for medical appointments, guidance on diet and workout routines, and weighing the trade-offs of different insurance options based on individual healthcare patterns.

The launch comes as health-related questions have emerged as one of the most common use cases for ChatGPT, with more than 230 million people worldwide asking health and wellness-related questions on the platform each week.

This is part of a broader base of more than 800 million weekly ChatGPT users, based on figures disclosed by the company in December.

To safeguard sensitive information, conversations within ChatGPT Health are siloed from other chats on the platform. Users’ conversations, connected apps and files in the health space will be stored separately, and data from the service will not be used to train OpenAI’s foundation models.