General AI vs Health-Specific AI for Medical Records
Why health-specific AI outperforms general-purpose AI like ChatGPT for managing medical records and understanding lab results.
You can ask ChatGPT about your lab results. But should you? And how does using general AI compare to using health-specific AI tools?
General Purpose AI
General AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini are trained on broad datasets covering many topics, including health.
What They Can Do
Answer general health questions. "What is TSH?" "What does high cholesterol mean?" General AI handles these well.
Explain medical terminology. Given a term, they can provide definitions and context.
Discuss research and guidelines. They have knowledge of medical literature, though with knowledge cutoffs.
Limitations for Health Data
No persistent memory of your data. You explain your values in one conversation, but the AI doesn't remember them next time (unless you're using specific memory features, which have their own privacy implications).
No trend tracking. You can paste values and ask about them, but there's no systematic tracking over time.
No document processing. You can't upload a lab report PDF and have it automatically extracted and organized.
Privacy concerns. Your health data goes to large tech companies. Are you comfortable with that?
No organization. Nothing is stored or organized. Each conversation starts fresh.
Variable accuracy. General AI can make mistakes on medical topics. There's no specialized validation.
Health-Specific AI
AI built specifically for health applications is designed to handle medical data.
What Health AI Offers
Document processing. Upload a PDF, image, or scan. The AI extracts all health values automatically.
Persistent data storage. Your health data is stored and organized, available across sessions.
Trend analysis. See how values change over time. Get insights about trajectories.
Medical knowledge in context. Explanations grounded in your actual data, not just generic information.
Privacy-focused design. Built specifically to handle sensitive health data appropriately.
Cross-reference capabilities. AI that can connect information across your complete health history.
Comparison Table
| Capability | General AI | Health-Specific AI |
|---|---|---|
| Explain medical terms | ✓ | ✓ |
| Extract data from documents | ✗ | ✓ |
| Track data over time | ✗ | ✓ |
| Remember your health history | Limited | ✓ |
| Visualize trends | ✗ | ✓ |
| Organize medical records | ✗ | ✓ |
| Purpose-built privacy | ✗ | ✓ |
| Integrate all your data | ✗ | ✓ |
Privacy Considerations
Using general AI for health data raises privacy questions.
When you paste your lab results into ChatGPT, that data goes to OpenAI's servers. How is it used? Is it retained? Could it be used for training? The answers depend on the service's policies, which can change.
Health-specific AI apps (should) have stronger privacy commitments because health data is their core focus. Look for:
- Clear data handling policies
- EU data storage for European users
- No use of your data for training general models
- GDPR-compliant data practices
When to Use What
Use general AI when:
- You have a quick question about a medical term
- You want general health information not specific to your data
- You're researching health topics broadly
Use health-specific AI when:
- You want to organize and track your medical records
- You need to process documents (lab reports, clinical notes)
- You want trend analysis of your personal data
- You need persistent storage and organization
- Privacy of your health data matters to you
The Healthbase Approach
Healthbase is health-specific AI, designed for exactly this use case:
Vision AI for documents. Upload any document format. AI extracts all health information.
Your complete health history. Data persisted, organized, and always available.
Memory and context. Conversations build on your complete health record.
Scientific and web sources. AI can reference relevant research for your specific data.
EU privacy standards. Your data stays in Europe, handled with health-grade privacy.
General AI is useful for general questions. But for managing your actual health data — extracting, organizing, tracking, understanding — you need AI built specifically for that purpose.
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