Microsoft joins crowd with health assistant for Copilot chatbot

Microsoft is adding a dedicated health assistant to its Copilot chatbot, joining the ranks of technology companies betting that customers will turn to artificial intelligence tools for medical care.

On Thursday, the software company launched Copilot Health, a portal and chat tool within its personal chatbot, and invited users in the U.S. to upload their medical history and data from wearable devices.

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's consumer AI chief, said the company hopes to replicate some of the experience of concierge medicine — typically a subscription service that offers additional access to clinicians outside of regular visits.

"I imagine very soon there is going to be a medical superintelligence available to everybody at their fingertips, 24 hours a day, providing you that perfect, personalized, synthesized nugget of health information," Suleyman said in an interview.

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Health is fast becoming a crowded field for AI as people pepper chatbots with medical questions and companies scramble to enhance those tools to enable them to look for patterns in data and converse with patients about their concerns. Earlier this week, Amazon rolled out a health chatbot on its website and mobile app, expanding a service previously available to members of its One Medical primary care franchise. OpenAI and Anthropic also have their own health specialist chatbots.

Microsoft's offering, which begins with invitations to some customers, will reside in the company's consumer Copilot, which is distinct from the features packaged with software for business customers. For individual Copilot users, health data will be segregated from the chatbot's other conversations, said the Redmond, Washington-based company.

The company said it encrypts its customers' health data, and subjects it to additional safety controls internally. User data in Copilot Health won't train AI models and people can delete their information at any time.

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Dominic King, a Microsoft vice president and longtime collaborator with Suleyman, said the company had built an internal clinical team, and consulted with hundreds of outside physicians on the chatbot's recommendations and safety. 

King said Copilot Health is not intended to provide a final diagnosis or formal treatment plan. In a demonstration of the software this week running on dummy patient data, Copilot Health advised a user complaining of jaw pain after a heart attack to "get evaluated in person today."

"This is very important technology for us to get right," King said.