Anthropic has unveiled Claude for Healthcare, a new suite of artificial intelligence tools designed for healthcare providers, insurers, and patients, marking its latest move into the rapidly growing health AI market.
The announcement comes days after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health, highlighting intensifying competition between leading AI firms to position their models within clinical and healthcare workflows.
Like OpenAI’s offering, Claude for Healthcare allows users to sync health data from smartphones, smartwatches, and other platforms. Both companies say such data will not be used to train their AI models. Anthropic, however, says its product is aimed less at consumer-facing chat experiences and more at supporting professional healthcare operations.
Claude for Healthcare introduces what Anthropic calls “connectors,” which give the AI direct access to authoritative medical and administrative databases. These include the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Coverage Database, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), the National Provider Identifier system, and the PubMed research database.
Anthropic said these connectors could help automate and speed up tasks such as prior authorization reviews, a process that requires clinicians to submit detailed documentation to insurers before treatments or medications are approved.
“Clinicians often report spending more time on documentation and paperwork than actually seeing patients,” Anthropic Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger said during a presentation on the product.
The company argues that administrative processes like prior authorization are better suited for automation than direct patient care, allowing doctors to focus more on clinical work. Claude for Healthcare is also positioned to assist with research, reporting, and data synthesis for both providers and payers.
The launch comes amid ongoing concerns within the medical community about the risks of using large language models for healthcare, particularly their tendency to generate inaccurate or misleading information. Anthropic said its emphasis on structured data access and task-specific “agent skills” is intended to reduce such risks.
AI tools are already being widely used for health-related queries. OpenAI has said that around 230 million people discuss health topics with ChatGPT each week, underscoring growing reliance on conversational AI for medical information.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI caution that their tools are not a replacement for professional medical advice and encourage users to consult qualified healthcare professionals for diagnosis and treatment decisions.
