Only two weeks after Time magazine highlighted the biggest real-world AI clinical decision support trial to date—Penda Health’s AI Consult powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o, spanning almost 40,000 visits and demonstrating a 16 % diagnostic error reduction—OpenAI has shone an even brighter light into the healthcare sector with the release of GPT-5. Written by Emma Beavins in Fierce Healthcare, Sam Altman outlined health as “one of the top reasons” that people employ ChatGPT, positioning the technology as a means to enable people to be “more in control” of their experiences around healthcare. GPT-5, since it’s available at no charge to every user, represents an enormous advancement in performance, obtaining 46 % on the difficult to pass HealthBench Hard benchmark as opposed to GPT-4o’s 0 %, with factual accuracy front and center—a requirement for any clinical application.

The Penda Health trial in Kenya showed the real-world effect AI can have when judiciously implemented in primary care workflows. At 15 clinics, AI Consult-using clinicians not only experienced fewer diagnostic mistakes but also fewer treatment and history-taking errors. Significantly, physicians said the system provided a “safety net” and “learning co-pilot” that provided corrective nudges but did not dictate decisions. Such success suggests AI can complement, as opposed to supplanting, clinical judgment where deployed in real-world settings. GPT-5 extends such use cases by enhancing those aspects in reliability, transparency, and natural language, making it a more usable interlocutor in healthcare discourse.

Globally, this change is met with enthusiasm as well as trepidation. On one level, GPT-5’s capacity to provide better, contextually informed health information—and provide it at no charge—may drastically broaden people’s ability to tap into medical knowledge. Measures such as HealthBench Hard, which target open-ended medical question factual accuracy, offer quantitative proof of such advances. However, concerns persist. Researchers have demonstrated that even sophisticated chat programs such as GPT-4o are capable of producing unsafe medical outputs as many as 13 % of the time. Although GPT-5 has minimized hallucinations and implemented mechanisms to refuse when in doubt, the risks in medicine are particularly extreme; one potentially erroneous recommendation can cause real harm. Deployment also carries challenges, depending as it does upon clinical alignment, sufficient training, and culturally suitable tailoring—components frequently ignored during hasty technological deployment.

From an Indian point of view, the prospects are attractive. In health systems where primary care physicians often juggle massive patient volumes, AI-powered decision support might prove an excellent force multiplier. Customizing GPT-5 to India’s regional patterns of disease, treatment algorithms, and many languages might then make it an accepted companion in rural as well as urban environments. Consider, for instance, a diabetic patient speaking Hindi—a user who might leverage GPT-5 to better interpret test results, prepare queries for a physician, and obtain lifestyle advice—overcoming health illiteracies that linger in underserved populations. But challenges abound as well. We cannot presume success from the Penda Health trial would automatically generalize to India; pilot programs would need to validate locally before mass deployment would even begin to make sense. And India’s long-standing digital divide—a phenomenon characterized by patchy internet penetration, uneven smartphone penetration, and variable digital awareness—means that even the offer of a free, sophisticated AI tool might still pass large swaths of people by.

Regulatory preparedness is another key issue. Currently, India does not possess distinct approval processes for medical AI technologies, and issues regarding clinical responsibility, information privacy, and ethical control remain unresolved. Lacking these protections risks spreading misinformation further, particularly in the multilingual setting where mistranslations would have the potential to alter meaning. As OpenAI researcher Max Schwarzer pointed out, GPT-5’s advance in HealthBench illustrates that factual accuracy has been given emphasis, but this would need to come with strong in-country control to protect patients in diverse healthcare contexts.

The global AI-healthcare discussion is increasingly being framed by the twin acknowledgement that these technologies can revolutionise care delivery and create whole new classes of risk. The Kenyan trial presents an encouraging prototype—AI as embedded collaborator in the clinical process, providing feedback but not substituting for human expertise. In India, a similar model could remedy chronic shortcomings in healthcare delivery, provided integration is deliberate, culture-aware, and informed by both clinician input and protections for patients. As one doctor in the Penda trial said, “It’s like having an expert there… a safety net—it’s not dictating what the care is, but only giving corrective nudges and feedback where it’s needed.” 

GPT-5, finally, is a breakthrough in AI’s ability to participate meaningfully in conversations around healthcare. By being offered at no charge, it lowers one barrier to access, and by providing better accuracy, it reduces—if does not eliminate—the hazards of using AI in clinical practice. For international as well as domestic Indian healthcare systems, the question is less whether AI will be included as part of the clinical discourse, but how fully and responsibly it will be introduced into practice. The promise is clear as day: an empowered, better-educated patient and better-supported physician. But making good on that promise will require something other than technical progress—it will require regulatory attention, cultural recenterings, and continuing testing in actual sites of care. In that sense, GPT-5 is best conceptualized less as ultimate solution, but as high-end instrument whose impact will depend upon those systems, safeguards, and strategies that shape how it is deployed.

Dr. Prahlada N.B
MBBS (JJMMC), MS (PGIMER, Chandigarh). 
MBA in Healthcare & Hospital Management (BITS, Pilani), 
Postgraduate Certificate in Technology Leadership and Innovation (MIT, USA)
Executive Programme in Strategic Management (IIM, Lucknow)
Senior Management Programme in Healthcare Management (IIM, Kozhikode)
Advanced Certificate in AI for Digital Health and Imaging Program (IISc, Bengaluru). 

Senior Professor and former Head, 
Department of ENT-Head & Neck Surgery, Skull Base Surgery, Cochlear Implant Surgery. 
Basaveshwara Medical College & Hospital, Chitradurga, Karnataka, India. 

My Vision: I don’t want to be a genius.  I want to be a person with a bundle of experience. 

My Mission: Help others achieve their life’s objectives in my presence or absence!

My Values:  Creating value for others. 

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