SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Epic integration on September 1, allowing approved healthcare organisations to bring authorised patient records into ChatGPT for Healthcare through a read-only connection.
Clinicians can review notes, medications, conditions, encounters and laboratory results that they already have permission to access.
OpenAI said ChatGPT can summarise changes in a patient’s history and help staff prepare for appointments. The Epic connection cannot change medical records, place orders or message patients.
Existing Epic permissions still apply, and OpenAI says clinicians remain responsible for checking source records and making care decisions.
Epic says more than 325 million patients have a current electronic record in its systems. However, the ChatGPT connection is limited to approved organisational deployments rather than automatically covering all Epic users or records.
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OpenAI also introduced a Healthcare Public Data plugin covering nine official sources. They include ClinicalTrials.gov and PubMed.
DailyMed, RxNorm and CMS Coverage, allowing healthcare teams to search for trial criteria, drug information and coverage records within ChatGPT.
UCSF Health is serving as a pilot partner for the EHR integration. President and CEO Suresh Gunasekaran said the organisation is testing whether the system can help clinical teams review complex patient records more quickly.
OpenAI said physicians evaluated the connected EHR system across 27 clinical use cases. Across 4,363 ratings, physicians rated 99.1% of responses as safe, although the result is an OpenAI evaluation and does not remove the need for clinician review.
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Healthcare organisations using protected health information must have the appropriate workspace setup, Epic authorisation and an applicable Business Associate Agreement.
