Apple and Garmin face a new kind of pressure from ChatGPT Health

OpenAI has announced ChatGPT Health, a new way to pull together your health data and actually talk to it. It’s not live yet, but it puts serious pressure on platforms like Garmin and Apple by making wearables feel less like apps and more like sidekicks.

A new interface for health is taking shape

Wearable brands have spent years building ecosystems around data silos. Garmin Connect, Apple Health, Fitbit and others each tried to become the place you go to make sense of your health. ChatGPT Health takes a different route by becoming the place you ask questions.

Instead of scrolling through graphs, users will be able to ask why their heart rate variability dropped, what a blood test means or whether their recent training lines up with better sleep. ChatGPT responds in everyday language, drawing from connected apps and medical records if granted permission.

This move from dashboard to conversation poses a challenge to traditional wearable platforms. If ChatGPT becomes the preferred destination for health interpretation, native apps risk being reduced to data suppliers. The sensor still matters, but the main interaction shifts somewhere else.

Apple wins short term access but faces long term erosion

Apple finds itself in a strong early position. ChatGPT Health supports Apple Health, and iOS is required for integration. That makes iPhones the gateway device for early users.

But while Apple gains convenience points, it also risks losing ground in user engagement. If daily health questions move into ChatGPT, Apple Health becomes less central. The timing of Apple’s expected Health+ subscription service, reportedly arriving later in 2026, now seems less accidental.

Apple’s likely move will be tighter on-device processing, stronger privacy messaging and more Siri-driven health flows. Keeping the most valuable health interactions within its own walls is key if it wants to stay more than just the backend.

Garmin’s nutrition update shows how it is adapting

Garmin Connect+ has been around for a while, but CES 2026 saw the introduction of native nutrition tracking as part of that tier. The move ties food logging into Active Intelligence summaries and helps keep users inside Garmin’s system.

The idea is to stop interpretation from leaking out. If Garmin can provide useful feedback on training load, calorie balance and recovery in one place, users may not feel the need to connect their data elsewhere.

However, Garmin stays focused on wellness and performance. It does not operate in the clinical space. ChatGPT Health, by contrast, has been developed alongside hundreds of physicians and uses a framework called HealthBench to guide its responses. The experience will include not just activity and sleep, but lab results and medical records too.

Garmin could benefit by offering users the ability to export curated training summaries into ChatGPT Health. That would keep it in control of context while letting users get additional insight elsewhere.

Subscription rings and bands face a new challenge

Platforms like Oura and Whoop have built their value on interpretation. They collect data, then tell you what it means. ChatGPT Health changes that equation. It offers interpretation at scale, backed by a much broader data set and the ability to link across different sources.

These companies will need to defend their position by focusing on exclusive metrics, coaching tools, and features that connect to daily decisions. Closed loops are hard to copy. If they can deliver real-time behaviour change, not just background analysis, they can still hold their ground.

But if ChatGPT becomes the main place users go to understand what is happening with their body, the pressure will build quickly.

The real contest is for context and consent

OpenAI says ChatGPT Health will keep all conversations in a separate space with added protections, and that nothing shared there will be used to train its models. Users choose what to connect, and they can revoke access at any time.

That approach lands just as US regulators are tightening the rules around what counts as a medical device and what stays in the wellness bucket. The FDA’s new guidance makes it clear that general-purpose AI assistants like ChatGPT Health can avoid heavy regulation if they stick to support and interpretation, rather than making diagnostic claims. That opens the door to wide adoption, especially if the platform keeps framing itself as a guide, not a clinician.

For Apple, this may be the moment to push even harder on privacy. With more health features handled on-device and under tighter user control, Apple can lean on its Private Cloud Compute system as a contrast to OpenAI’s cloud-based model.

In the end, this is no longer just about who collects your heart rate or step count. The bigger question is who gets to explain it. Dashboards used to be where all the value lived. Now, users are shifting toward tools that offer answers, not charts. The wearable on your wrist might still be tracking everything, but the decisions that come out of that data may soon be happening somewhere else.

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