OpenAI Unveils GPT-5, Highlights Healthcare Applications

The announcement was made during the company’s Summer Update meeting, during which live demonstrations showcased the model’s capabilities in medical use cases.

OpenAI has launched its most advanced reasoning model, GPT-5, positioning healthcare as a key focus area in its latest upgrade.

The announcement was made during the company’s Summer Update meeting, during which live demonstrations showcased the model’s capabilities in medical use cases.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said health is among the top reasons consumers use ChatGPT. “It empowers you to be more in control of your healthcare journey,” Altman noted, adding that the company prioritized healthcare improvements in GPT-5.

The model will be available on the free version of the ChatGPT app, expanding access for users seeking support in making treatment decisions, interpreting test results, and preparing questions for medical consultations.

Participation in the U.S. health data sharing effort

Altman recently attended the White House’s Make Health Tech Great Again event on July 30, where President Donald Trump and health leaders launched a private sector initiative to improve health data sharing. OpenAI was among 60 companies pledging support for the administration’s interoperability goals.

“For decades, bureaucrats and entrenched interests buried health data and blocked patients from taking control of their health,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a statement. “That ends today. We’re tearing down digital walls, returning power to patients, and rebuilding a health system that serves the people. This is how we begin to Make America Healthy Again.”

Performance in medical benchmarks

In May, OpenAI introduced HealthBench, an evaluation framework developed with 250 physicians from 60 countries. GPT-5 outperformed previous models, including GPT-4o, GPT-4, and GPT-3.

“Language models have long been plagued by hallucinations that make it hard to rely on their outputs for important tasks,” an executive said at the meeting. “For GPT-5, we made factuality, especially on open-ended questions, a priority.”

A cancer patient who had used GPT-4 to understand biopsy results and weigh treatment options said GPT-5 offers faster, more nuanced responses. According to Altman, the new model delivers expert-level answers and can “understand how hard to think on each problem.”

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