The trend: Niche healthcare AI tools are vying for share against general-purpose genAI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini.

Editor’s note: This article is part of our Health Trends to Watch in 2026 report. Read the report in full here.

Unpacking the trend: Healthcare and tech players are building their own genAI tools to answer health questions and potentially draw users from frontier AI models.

• Alphabet subsidiary Verily recently rolled out a free app that uses genAI to answer questions about users’ medical records—accessed through partnerships with some health systems—such as when they’re due for a flu shot.
• Tech-based health insurance company Oscar’s member-facing genAI agent answers specific questions, such as the cost of a medical service or help refilling a prescription.
• Pfizer’s new genAI product answers general health and wellness questions—offering personalized guidance when users share health information—and includes links to verified medical sources.
• Verily and Oscar both highlighted the advantage of using patients’ health data to inform their genAI tools—an edge general-purpose platforms like ChatGPT lack unless users supply that information (e.g., uploading lab results or other medical record data).

Why it matters: Platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini have broad reach and serve varied user needs, with consumers likely switching between them depending on the task.

• Adding another site or app for a specialized use case is unlikely to appeal to most consumers, particularly as folks get more comfortable using general-purpose AI tools for health information.
• 52% of consumers have used ChatGPT to check medical symptoms at some point, ranking higher than any other tool other than search engines, according to an October 2025 survey from Asbestos.com.

Implications for healthcare AI companies: AI tools that tap into personal medical data may grow in use, mainly among that organization’s members or patients. But the popularity of ChatGPT and the rising convenience of Gemini—namely, features like Google’s AI Mode, which turns search engine queries into a conversational AI chatbot with a single click—will make it hard for niche products to pull consumers away for everyday medical questions.

Read next: Click here to read our complete list of predictions for consumer AI health trends in 2025.

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