Anthropic Launches Claude for Healthcare, Challenging OpenAI’s Medical AI Push
Just days after OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Health, Anthropic has announced Claude for Healthcare, bringing the AI rivalry into the medical sector with a focus on administrative automation and clinical trial support.
Responding to OpenAI’s Healthcare Push
The announcement comes hot on the heels of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Health launch, which revealed that 230 million ChatGPT users ask health-related questions weekly. Anthropic is now directly competing in this lucrative and sensitive market.
Key Features
Prior Authorization Automation
The flagship feature targets one of healthcare’s biggest administrative burdens: prior authorization documents. By connecting directly to ICD-10 and NPI Registries, Claude acts as an automated medical coder.
“Clinicians often report spending more time on documentation and paperwork than actually seeing patients,” said Anthropic CPO Mike Krieger in the product presentation.
The system can potentially cut review times from days to minutes, freeing doctors to focus on patient care.
Clinical Trial Support
Anthropic is also targeting life sciences with new connectors to:
- Medidata: For real-time trial data tracking
- ClinicalTrials.gov: For protocol compliance
- Open Targets: For research insights
Key capabilities include:
- Drafting clinical trial protocols that account for FDA guidelines
- Real-time enrollment tracking with site performance alerts
- Accelerated regulatory query responses
Consumer Health Integration
In a move likely to spark privacy debates, Claude for Healthcare also includes beta integrations with:
- Apple Health
- Android Health Connect
Subscribers can grant Claude secure access to personal health metrics for synthesized health insights.
Powered by Claude Opus 4.5
The healthcare offering is powered by Claude Opus 4.5, which features:
- Extended thinking: Up to 64K tokens of context for processing dense medical records
- Reduced hallucinations: Critical for clinical settings where accuracy is non-negotiable
- Multi-step workflow execution: Ability to plan and execute complex administrative tasks
Industry Competition Heats Up
The healthcare AI market is rapidly becoming a key battleground between OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies see medical applications as a major enterprise opportunity, though they must navigate strict regulatory requirements and patient safety concerns.