Previously, the assistant was only available through One Medical, the primary care provider Amazon acquired for $3.9 billion in 2023.

With the expansion, customers can now access Health AI through the Amazon platform without needing to be Prime subscribers or One Medical members.

Health AI is designed to answer general health questions, explain medical records, help manage prescription renewals and schedule appointments. The tool can also connect users to healthcare professionals when medical attention is required.

According to Amazon, the AI assistant can respond to general health queries even without access to personal medical information.

However, with a user’s permission, the system can retrieve health data through the Health Information Exchange, a nationwide network that securely shares patient medical records.

This allows Health AI to interpret lab results, diagnoses and other medical records to provide more personalised responses about symptoms or medications.

Users can interact with the assistant by typing questions on Amazon’s website or in the app. For example, they may ask the system to explain cholesterol test results or seek advice on symptoms such as congestion or sore throat.

The company said all interactions with Health AI take place in a HIPAA-compliant environment, with conversations protected by encryption and strict access controls. Amazon added that its AI models are trained using abstracted patterns rather than identifiable patient data.

For instance, if many users ask about medication interactions, the company may analyse those patterns to improve responses while keeping personal information private.

Still, researchers have pointed to the risk of sharing sensitive health information with AI systems, warning that some companies use user conversations to train their models.

Health AI can also connect users with providers at One Medical if professional care is needed. In the United States, Prime members using the service are eligible for up to five free direct-message consultations with a One Medical provider for more than 30 common conditions such as cold and flu, allergies, acid reflux and urinary tract infections. Non-Prime users can still consult providers through Amazon’s pay-per-visit option.

The expansion comes as several artificial intelligence companies move further into healthcare. OpenAI recently introduced a health-focused version of ChatGPT designed to answer medical questions, while Anthropic launched a healthcare-oriented version of its Claude chatbot.

Amazon Pharmacy adds caregiver support and expands PillPack access

Alongside the Health AI rollout, Amazon also announced two updates to Amazon Pharmacy aimed at simplifying how customers manage medications.

The first update introduces a caregiver feature that allows trusted individuals to manage prescriptions for family members or loved ones through their own Amazon Pharmacy accounts. Once verified, caregivers can place orders, manage medications and track deliveries on behalf of the patient.

Amazon said the feature addresses a growing need for support among caregivers. Data from AARP shows that about one in five adults in the United States, around 53 million people, care for an ageing family member, usually spending lots of time coordinating healthcare and medications.

Through the new feature, customers can invite caregivers by sending a secure SMS link from their Amazon Pharmacy account. After confirming details such as the patient’s date of birth, caregivers can begin managing prescriptions online.

The company also expanded access to PillPack from Amazon Pharmacy, a service that delivers medications in pre-sorted packets organised by date and time. The system is designed for patients who take multiple prescriptions daily, helping them avoid managing several pill bottles.

With the update, more than 50 million beneficiaries of Medicare Part D can now use their insurance to access the PillPack service. Customers enrolled in the program receive monthly deliveries of personalised medication packets and can track shipments through the Amazon app.

Amazon Pharmacy accepts most insurance plans, including Medicare Part D nationwide and Medicaid in selected states. The company also offers additional discounts and delivery benefits for Prime members, including free same-day medication delivery in some U.S. cities.

The acquisition brings Torch’s four-person team into OpenAI and folds its core technology straight into the health product unveiled in January 2026. 

Torch gives OpenAI a ready-made system for pulling together scattered medical data at a moment when the company wants to enhance its focus on personal health tools.

Torch had been building what it described as “a medical memory for AI, unifying scattered records into a context engine.” The idea is to take health information spread across clinics, labs, wearables and wellness apps, and make it usable in one place. 

That work now sits at the heart of ChatGPT Health, which allows users to securely link medical records and daily health data inside the chatbot.

While OpenAI did not disclose the price, reports vary. Some put the value near $100 million in equity, others closer to $60 million. Either way, the structure points to an acqui-hire. The team joins; the product becomes infrastructure.

This development lands just over a year after a very different ending for the same founders. Torch’s team met while working at Forward Health, a high-profile clinic startup built around automated care. 

Forward raised close to $400 million before shutting down abruptly in late 2024, laying off staff and closing its doors. Torch’s sale shows how fast fortunes can turn in health technology, where ideas outlive companies.

ChatGPT Health itself is standing carefully. OpenAI says it is a secure, separate space within ChatGPT, designed to help people organise information, prepare questions and understand records, not to replace doctors. More than 260 physicians were involved in building safeguards around how responses are delivered.

With Torch in-house, OpenAI wants to solve one of the hardest problems in digital healthcare; making sense of messy, fragmented data without losing context or trust. 

The product, called Claude for Healthcare, is designed to take on the heavy administrative and research workload that slows down medical care, while also giving patients a better way to understand their own health data. 

At its core, the new product allows healthcare organisations to connect Claude to industry databases. These connections let the system search, verify and organise medical and policy information that clinicians and insurers usually spend hours tracking down. 

Anthropic says this will reduce delays in processes such as prior authorisation, where doctors must justify treatments before insurers approve payment.

“Clinicians often report spending more time on documentation and paperwork than actually seeing patients,” Mike Krieger, Anthropic chief product officer said.

Rather than replacing doctors, the company is pushing Claude into the background work that clogs up healthcare. Submitting forms, checking coverage rules, matching diagnosis codes and assembling appeal documents are all tasks the system is meant to handle faster. 

For insurers and providers, this could mean quicker decisions and fewer backlogs. For patients, it could mean less waiting.

Claude for Healthcare connects directly to systems such as the US Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services coverage database, the ICD-10 coding system, the National Provider Identifier registry and PubMed’s vast research library. 

With these links in place, the system can cross-check policy regulations against patient records, flag missing information and prepare reports that staff would normally compile by hand.

Anthropic is also adding specialised features aimed at interoperability and approvals. One tool focuses on FHIR, the standard used to move data between healthcare systems, while another provides a configurable template for prior authorisation reviews. 

The idea is to reduce errors that creep in when staff juggle multiple platforms under time pressure.

Beyond administration, the company is adding to Claude’s functions in life sciences. New integrations are intended to support clinical trials, regulatory submissions and research analysis, areas where speed and accuracy can tell whether new treatments reach the public sooner.

Patients are part of the plan too. In the US, subscribers on higher-tier plans can choose to connect Claude to personal health records, lab results and fitness data through platforms such as Apple Health and Android Health Connect. 

When enabled, the system can summarise medical history, explain test results in plain language and help users prepare questions for their doctors. Anthropic stresses that users stay in control of what is shared and that health data is not used to train its models.

The development comes as large numbers of people already turn to conversational systems to discuss health issues. OpenAI has said that around 230 million people talk about their health with ChatGPT each week, a fact that patients are filling gaps where access to clinicians is limited. 

Both companies, however, warn that these tools are not a substitute for professional medical advice.

A direct response to how people already use the service, OpenAI says more than 230 million users ask health and wellness questions every week. 

Until now, those conversations sat beside everyday chats. With Health, they are ring-fenced. The company says this separation is meant to stop sensitive health details from appearing in unrelated discussions, while still allowing users to return to them when needed.

The Health section operates as its own environment. If someone begins discussing a medical concern in a regular chat, the system is designed to prompt a move into Health, where added privacy applies. 

At the same time, limited context from general chats, such as lifestyle habits or fitness goals, may be used to make health discussions more relevant. The flow works one way only. Health information does not feed back into standard conversations.

A major part of the rollout is data connection. Users will be able to link medical records and wellness apps, including Apple Health, Function and MyFitnessPal, so conversations are grounded in personal information rather than general advice. 

OpenAI says these health chats will not be used to train its models, and that the feature uses extra layers of encryption and isolation because of the sensitivity of the data involved.

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s chief executive for applications, described the product as an answer to long-standing problems in healthcare, including high costs, limited access, overbooked doctors and poor continuity of care. 

The aim, she said, is to help people feel more prepared and informed when dealing with their own health, not to replace medical professionals.

However, systems like ChatGPT generate responses based on patterns, not on an understanding of truth, and can sometimes produce inaccurate information. OpenAI acknowledges this risk. 

In its own terms, the company states that it is “not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition.”

ChatGPT Health has been developed with input from hundreds of doctors across dozens of specialities, according to OpenAI. Their feedback has impacted how the feature explains results, flags potential risks and encourages follow-up with clinicians when necessary. 

Even so, the company stresses that the tool is meant to support everyday understanding, not clinical decision-making.

Access will begin with a limited group of users in the coming weeks, with a wider rollout planned after further testing. Some integrations, including medical record connections, will initially be available only in the United States. 

The company’s AI chief, Mustafa Suleyman, confirmed that Microsoft will highly invest in the new unit, which he described as a step toward “medical superintelligence” capable of identifying diseases faster and more accurately than current methods. 

He said the company expects “a line of sight to medical superintelligence in the next two to three years.”

At the heart of this new direction is Microsoft’s MAI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), an AI system benchmarked against real-world medical records from the New England Journal of Medicine. 

The model reportedly achieved up to 85% accuracy in diagnosing complex medical cases, four times higher than experienced physicians, while operating at a lower cost. The system will serve as the foundation for Microsoft’s vision under the new team.

Suleyman, who co-founded DeepMind before joining Microsoft, explained that the company is not trying to build an all-purpose artificial intelligence that mirrors human thinking. 

Instead, it is pursuing what he calls “Humanist Superintelligence”, AI designed to solve concrete, high-value problems with minimal risk. “Humanism requires us to always ask the question: does this technology serve human interests?” he said.

The new initiative gives Microsoft a unique standing among competitors like Meta, OpenAI, and Safe Superintelligence Inc., which are competing to create general-purpose systems that can perform across multiple fields. 

Suleyman argued that such generalist models are difficult to control and align with human values, while Microsoft’s specialist approach can be guided within clear ethical and regulatory boundaries.

Leading the MAI Superintelligence Team is Karen Simonyan, a highly regarded AI researcher and former DeepMind scientist. Microsoft also plans to expand the team by recruiting talent from top laboratories, mirroring recent aggressive hiring strategies in the industry.

Suleyman stressed that this project is not another kind of marketing but is a focused attempt to leverage AI for measurable human benefit.

He envisions that diagnostic AI could “increase our life expectancy and give everybody more healthy years, because we’ll be able to detect preventable diseases much earlier.”

The round was led by Blume Ventures, with support from Schema Ventures, Vicus Ventures, Together Fund, DeVC, Medmountain Ventures, and strategic investors including Innovaccer, Memora Health, and existing customers.

The company is tackling one of healthcare’s biggest pain points which is patient phone calls. Despite digital options, 81% of patients in 2025 still use the phone to contact doctors, often facing long waits, confusing menus, or delayed responses. On the other side, understaffed front desks struggle to manage the volume, leading to frustration and burnout.

Confido’s platform removes the traditional phone tree. Its voice agents answer calls immediately, verify the caller, check insurance eligibility, and handle tasks such as referrals, refills, payments, updates, or appointment bookings. More complex issues are transferred to staff, with all interactions recorded directly into electronic health record (EHR) or practice management systems (PMS).

The need for such automation is increasing. The American Hospital Association has warned that hospitals are under severe financial strain while demand for round-the-clock access keeps growing. Many startups have entered this space in 2025, but Confido differentiates itself by offering a broader range of workflows beyond scheduling, giving providers higher efficiency and return on investment.

In less than a year, the company has scaled rapidly, serving more than one million patients today compared to just 150,000 in December 2024. Automation rates exceed 80%, with clients reporting reduced wait times, faster resolutions, and significant time savings for staff.

At Dallas Renal Group, results were immediate as 66% of patients confirmed appointments instantly on outbound calls, fewer than 6% required staff involvement, and inbound call wait times dropped to 15 seconds, saving nearly 50 staff hours in a single week. “Confido has helped make access faster, smoother, and far less stressful for everyone,” said Srinivas Danda, COO of Dallas Renal Group.

Confido’s Co-founder and CEO, Chetan Reddy, stressed the urgency of the moment. “Healthcare is at an inflection point. Labour shortages and rising patient demand mean practices can’t keep scaling front desks the way they used to. At the same time, building AI for healthcare isn’t like other industries – it requires deep empathy for both staff and patients. Our agents are designed to support people, not replace them, so patients get faster access and workers feel less stressed. That combination is what makes this moment so powerful.”

The company already operates across multiple specialities, including paediatrics, orthopaedics, nephrology, dermatology, gastroenterology, and pain medicine. Its roadmap goes beyond scheduling to include recalls, reactivation, payments, and care coordination, with speciality playbooks, audit trails, analytics, and first-call resolution metrics.

Investors are confident in Confido’s position. Sanjay Nath, partner at Blume Ventures, said: “Chetan, Vichar and the Confido team have gone incredibly deep into the trenches of the healthcare industry, having faced the pains of poor patient experience themselves – and have emerged with an offering that is transforming the way patient communication with providers is run. 

“It is clear to us that healthcare especially in the US is ripe for AI-led transformation, given the widespread administrative staff shortages, and Confido Health is well positioned to 10X the patient experience. We are very excited to lead this investment round and see a clear path to Confido becoming the market leader in this space, driven by a patient-first product ethos and close partnership with the provider ecosystem.”

Shubham Gupta, founding general partner at Together Fund, added: “Chetan, Vichar, and the Confido team have gone deeper than anyone we’ve seen in tackling the patient access problem. Their fully generative, multi-agent platform is not just a tech innovation — it’s already proving its impact in real-world provider settings by handling the communication bottlenecks that EHRs and legacy vendors have consistently failed at. 

“They are also building the most differentiated tech in this space focused on data & integrations not just voice. We’re excited to partner with them in building the market leader in AI-powered patient engagement.”

Confido Health believes that phones will remain healthcare’s most common entry point. In turning calls into efficient, human-like conversations, the company aims to become the standard infrastructure for patient communication across clinics and health systems of every size.