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ChatGPT Health

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71–80 of 677 posts

Re: ChatGPT Health

#71

yikes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46524382 [Teenager died of overdose 'after ChatGPT coached him on drug-taking']

An estimated 371,000 people die every year following a misdiagnosis, and 424,000 are permanently disabled. https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/33/2/109?rss=1

Admittedly I am basing this on pure vibes: I'd bet that adding AI to the healthcare environment will, on balance, reduce this number, not increase it.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#72
post #22

I personally don’t care who has access to my health data, but I understand those who might. Either way, I’m excited for some actual innovation in the personal health field. Apple Health is more about aggregating data than actually producing actionable insights. 23andme was mostly useless. Today I have a ChatGPT project with my health history as a system prompt and it’s been very helpful. Recently I snapped a photo of…

> Recently I snapped a photo of an obscure instrument screen after taking a test and was able to get more useful information than what my doctor eventually provided (“nothing to worry about”, etc.) ChatGPT was able to reference papers and do data analysis which was pretty amazing, right from my phone (e.g fitting my data to a model from a paper and spitting out a plot). If you don't mind sharing, what kind of useful…

In one case it was a urinary flow test (uroflowmetry). The results go to a lab and then the doctor gets the summary. Was able to diagnose the issue, prevalence, etc. and educate myself about treatment and risks before seeing a doctor. Papers gave me distributions of flow by age, sex, etc. so I knew it was out of range.

In another case I uploaded a CSV of CGM data, analyzed it and identified trends (e.g. Saturday morning blood sugar spikes). All in five minutes on my phone.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#73
post #65

I’m kind of torn on this. From one side, I can’t seem to trust doctors any more. I recently had a tooth removed (by the advice of two different doctors), in a claim that it will resolve my pain, which it did not, and now 3 different doctors don’t know what’s causing my pain. Most doctor advice boil down to drink some water and take a painkiller, while glancing for 15 seconds at my medical history before they dedicate…

This is part of the reason that alternative medicine has become so popular, there are definitely still some trustworthy doctors out there, but I share the same experience as you where I feel left with no recourse but to take care of things myself after seeing multiple doctors who make it very clear that they have no interest or time to listen to me.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#74

Here’s something: my chatGPT quietly assumed I had ADHD for around 9 months, up until October 2025. I don’t suffer from ADHD. I only found out through an answer that began “As you have ADHD..” I had it stop right there, and asked it to tell me exactly where it got this information; the date, the title of the chat, the exact moment it took this data on as an attribute of mine. It was unable to specify any of it, aside…

Disable memories so each chat is independent.

If you want chats to shared info, then use a project.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#75
ChatGPT has become an indispensable health tool for me. It serves as a great complement to my doctor. And there's been at least two cases in our house where it provided recommendations that were of great value (one possibly life saving and the other saving from an unnecessary surgery). I think that specialized LLMs will eventually be the front-line doctor/nurse.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#76
post #65

I’m kind of torn on this. From one side, I can’t seem to trust doctors any more. I recently had a tooth removed (by the advice of two different doctors), in a claim that it will resolve my pain, which it did not, and now 3 different doctors don’t know what’s causing my pain. Most doctor advice boil down to drink some water and take a painkiller, while glancing for 15 seconds at my medical history before they dedicate…

All the downsides you listed can be solved by public open source models. The ones we have are pretty good already and I would hope that they only get better in the near future. Once you can it on your machine you can safely give it all your data and much more. Of course i would still like a human doctor but it might be a better tool for personal research before you see an expert than what we had in the past.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#77
post #65

I’m kind of torn on this. From one side, I can’t seem to trust doctors any more. I recently had a tooth removed (by the advice of two different doctors), in a claim that it will resolve my pain, which it did not, and now 3 different doctors don’t know what’s causing my pain. Most doctor advice boil down to drink some water and take a painkiller, while glancing for 15 seconds at my medical history before they dedicate…

most doctors - like most mechanics - are the worst debuggers in humankind.

I once went to the UCSF er 2x in the same weekend for an issue. On day one, I was told to take some ibuprofen and drink water - nothing to worry about. I went home, knowing this was not a solution. Day two I returned to the ER because my situation had gotten 10x worse. The (new) doctor on day 2 said "we need to resolve this asap" and I was moved into a room where they gave me a throat-numbing breating apparatus and then shoved a massive spinal tap needle in my throat to drain 20ml of fluid from behind my tonsil. I happened to bump into the doctor from the previous day on my way out and gave him a nice tap on the shoulder saying, thanks for all the help, doc. UCSF tried to bill me 2x for this combined event, but I told them to get fucked due to the negligence on day one. The billing issue disappeared.

I had a Jeep that I took into the shop 2, 3, 4 times for a crazy issue. The radio, seat belt chime, and emergency flashers all become possessed at the same time. Using my turn signal would cause the radio to cut in and out. My seat belt kept saying it was disconnected. No one could fix it. What was the issue? A loose ground on the chassis that all of those different systems were sharing. https://www.wranglerforum.com/threads/2015-rubicon-with-elec...

These are just two examples from my life, but there are countless. I just do everything myself now, because I trust no one else.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#78

Another nail in the coffin for apps that depend on AI APIs because the AI companies themselves are working on products using their own APIs (unless you can make the UX significantly better). UX now seems like the prime motivator when building apps.

LLMs themselves are the coffin for most apps, because by its very nature, AI subsumes products . UX is not going to be a prime motivator, because the product itself is the very thing that stands between user and the thing they want. UX-wise, for most software, it's better for users to have all these products to be reduced to tool calls for AI agents, accessible via a single interface. The very concept of product itse…

Depends on the product itself. For example I use an LLM for tracking calorie data by telling it or providing a picture of the food I had, and it does a web search to find those details. The problem is it doesn't actually remember past meals, so I wrapped this API call in a simple app that just tracks the calorie numbers like a traditional app.

Just having an LLM is not the right UX for the vast majority of apps.

Re: ChatGPT Health

#79
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you giving your vitals to Sam Altman just like that? What instrument?

Yes, if it will help me and others. Again, I understand those who disagree.

But this is a 'cart before the horse' situation.

What evidence do you have that providing your health information to this company will help you or anyone (other than those with financial interest in the company)?

There is a very real, near definite, chance that giving your, and others', health data to this company will hurt you and others.

Will you still hold this, "I personally don’t care who has access to my health data", position?

Re: ChatGPT Health

#80
"we built foundational protections (...) including (...) training our models not to retain personal information from user chats"

Can someone please ELI5 - why is this a training issue, rather than basic design? How does one "train" for this?

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