OpenAI is once again venturing into AI-driven healthcare, this time with New York-based behaviour change technology company Thrive Global.
The OpenAI Startup Fund and Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global have announced the formation of Thrive AI Health, an entirely new company dedicated to creating an AI health coach to provide expert-level health coaching to improve health outcomes and address health inequities, particularly in chronic disease management.
“Using AI in this way would also scale and democratise the life-saving benefits of improving daily habits and address growing health inequities,” said Sam Altman and Huffington, stating that while those with more resources already access trainers and life coaches, a hyper-personalised AI health coach can make healthy behaviour changes accessible to everyone, especially those disproportionately affected by chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Led by former Google product leader DeCarlos Love, the Alice L. Walton Foundation is also backing the new company. The CEO brings extensive experience from Google, and Apple, and his work on childhood obesity programs.
“This product will solve the limitations of current AI and LLM-based solutions by providing personalised, proactive, and data-driven coaching across the five daily behaviours. This is how it will improve health outcomes, reduce healthcare costs and significantly impact chronic diseases worldwide,” said Love.
Thrive AI Health’s mission is to use generative AI to offer hyper-personalised health coaching focusing on five key daily behaviours: sleep, nutrition, fitness, stress management, and social connections. These behaviours impact health outcomes more than medical care or genetics. By promoting healthier habits in these areas, the AI coach aims to enhance both health spans and lifespans.
The AI Health Coach will combine peer-reviewed science, biometric data, and user preferences to offer a transformative health experience. It will be powered by a unified health data platform with strong privacy and security measures.
The platform will utilise Thrive Global’s behaviour change methodology, Microsteps, and benefit from the latest AI advancements, including enhanced memory capabilities and a custom behavioural coaching model.
The initiative has established research partnerships with Stanford Medicine, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, and the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. These partnerships aim to integrate the AI Health Coach into their communities and explore its potential to improve health outcomes.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff also took to X to appreciate the move.
However, this is not the first time that OpenAI is working in healthcare. Previously, it recently partnered with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna to develop mRNA medicines.
Moderna is developing a pilot program called Dose ID with ChatGPT Enterprise. This tool reviews and analyses clinical data, integrates large datasets, and visualises them. Dose ID aims to help clinical study teams improve data analysis and decision-making. It has also partnered with other health tech platforms like WHOOP, Summer Health, and more, to accelerate healthcare ambitions.
