- NEWS AND VIEWS
The use of artificial-intelligence tools in medicine is increasing. What types of technology might be on the horizon and how can such health-advice tools be tested?
By
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Emma Pierson
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Emma Pierson is at the University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94703, USA.
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Although people report increasing trepidation about the effects of artificial intelligence across many domains, health care emerges as a rare area of some optimism1. AI tools, in the form of large language models (LLMs), such as the chatbot ChatGPT, are widely used for health advice. It is estimated that one-third of US adults turn to chatbots for answers to health questions2, and globally it has been suggested that about 230 million people ask ChatGPT health and wellness questions every week3. Writing in Nature, Heydari et al.4 present their response to this enormous demand by creating and assessing an AI personal health ‘agent’, which is designed to analyse an individual’s health data and offer advice.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03065-4
References
Nature 658, 7–8 (2026).
Heydari, A. A. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11161-8 (2026).
Ramaswamy, A. et al. Nature Med. 32, 1671–1675 (2026).
Agrawal, M., Chen, I. Y., Gulamali, F. & Joshi, S. npj Digit. Med. 8, 600 (2025).
Heinz, M. V. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. AI https://doi.org/10.1056/AIoa2400802 (2025).
Mathioudakis, N. et al. JAMA 334, 2079–2089 (2025).
Kario, K. et al. Eur. Heart J. 42, 4111–4122 (2021).
Wong, C. H. Y. et al. npj Digit. Med. 9, 657 (2026).
Pierson, E. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. AI https://doi.org/10.1056/AIp2400889 (2025).
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.
