OpenAI's ChatGPT Health (launched Jan 7, 2026) recommends how urgently to follow up with a clinician and can serve as a safe first-contact point for symptom guidance.
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Expert: Ramaswamy, A.; Tyagi, A.; Hugo, H. et al., Researchers, Nature Medicine A Nature Medicine structured stress test of ChatGPT Health — 960 responses: 60 clinician-authored vignettes across 21 clinical domains under 16 factorial conditions — found its triage performance followed an inverted U, failing at the clinical extremes that matter most. Among gold-standard emergencies, ChatGPT Health undertriaged 51.6% of cases, directing patients with diabetic ketoacidosis or impending respiratory failure to a 24-48 hour follow-up instead of the emergency department. At the same time, 64.8% of nonurgent cases were overtriaged. Accuracy peaked only for intermediate presentations (93.0% semi-urgent, 76.9% urgent) and collapsed to 35.2% for nonurgent and 48.4% for emergency cases. Anchoring bias — when family or friends minimized symptoms in the vignette — shifted triage decisions in edge cases with an odds ratio of 11.7, mostly toward less urgent care. Crisis-intervention messages activated unpredictably across suicidal-ideation presentations. The finding is significant because OpenAI markets ChatGPT Health as a safe first-contact point for symptom guidance. For true emergencies, that claim does not hold: a model that sends 1 in 2 emergency patients to a same-week appointment is not a safe triage tool. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04297-7
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