AskMed vs ChatGPT

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is OpenAI's general-purpose AI chatbot, used for writing, coding, planning, learning, images and voice conversations as well as health questions. The ChatGPT App Store page calls ChatGPT "Your everyday AI assistant" and lists it under Productivity, not Medical. ChatGPT answers from what its model learned in training and can also search the web: according to OpenAI's help center, ChatGPT rewrites a question into search queries, sends them to search providers and shows citations and a Sources list when a reply uses search. The same help article warns that search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect, and asks users to open each source and check its date. OpenAI's usage policies, updated in October 2025, list tailored advice that requires a license, such as medical advice, without appropriate involvement by a licensed professional among the uses OpenAI doesn't allow. ChatGPT also offers study mode, which explains topics step by step and can quiz you on request.

OpenAI also launched ChatGPT for Clinicians on April 22, 2026, a separate workspace that OpenAI says is open to verified US physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and pharmacists. This page compares AskMed with the general ChatGPT app; for the clinician product, see OpenEvidence vs ChatGPT for Clinicians.

How do they answer a medical question differently?

AskMed and ChatGPT differ most in where an answer comes from before it is written. AskMed always searches first, and only a fixed list of medical sites: journals and databases such as PubMed, the Cochrane Library, NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA and The BMJ; guidelines and agencies such as NICE, WHO, CDC, ESC, KDIGO and GINA; FDA and DailyMed drug labels; and references such as StatPearls and BMJ Best Practice. AskMed ranks guidelines first, then systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and prefers sources from the last 10 years. The answer cites 8 sources by default, with a link after each claim. ChatGPT answers from its training data unless it chooses, or is asked, to search the web, and the web search is not limited to medical sources. A reply written from memory carries no source at all, so the reader cannot see where a claim came from or how strong the evidence behind it is. That difference decides how fast you can check an answer.

Citations written from memory are a known risk for general chatbots. Walters and Wilder (Scientific Reports, 2023) checked 636 citations in ChatGPT-written literature reviews and found 55% of the GPT-3.5 citations and 18% of the GPT-4 citations were fabricated. Newer models and web search have reduced the problem, but a reference still needs to be opened before it is trusted. AskMed is told never to invent web addresses, studies or statistics, and an answer that comes back citing no source is replaced by a fixed reply asking you to rephrase. The full detail is in how AskMed answers, and the studies on ChatGPT are summarized in is ChatGPT accurate for medical questions?

Drug questions

For drug questions, AskMed reads the official prescribing label from the FDA and DailyMed, and for local brand names it also checks national drug registries such as the EMA and the UK's medicines.org.uk, so a local brand name can be matched to its official label. AskMed never gives doses, dose calculations or titration schedules; a drug answer covers indications, mechanism, first-line and alternative options, how dosing is adjusted for kidney or liver function, monitoring, interactions and side effects, and exact amounts come from the current label.

Control over the evidence

AskMed's source filters let you switch journals, guidelines, drug labels or references on or off, choose study types from systematic reviews to clinical trials, and set the number of sources from 3 to 12. Research Mode reads up to 20 papers for one question.

When to use each

Use AskMed when the answer will inform clinical work, study or research and you need to see the source behind each sentence. A family doctor checking whether a guideline changed, a nurse looking up monitoring for a drug, a pharmacist reviewing an interaction, a medical student working through a USMLE vignette and a researcher scoping the evidence for a protocol all need the same thing: a direct answer built from journals, guidelines and drug labels, with every claim linked so it can be opened and confirmed in seconds. AskMed also states the year of each guideline recommendation it gives, says when sources disagree and which evidence is stronger, and answers in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Arabic. Use ChatGPT for the general work around medicine that doesn't need a clinical source: drafting an email, planning a rota, rewording a paragraph you wrote, or brainstorming an outline. Many clinicians keep both, with AskMed for medical questions and ChatGPT for everything else.

For exam preparation

AskMed's Exam Prep has written question banks for PLAB, USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK, PLE, EDN, UKOMNAS, NEET-PG, ENARM, TUS, Ghana MDC and Israel MLE, each in the language of its exam. Every question explains every option, links 1 to 3 sources such as NICE guidance, and only reviewed questions are served; a timed mock gives 40 questions in 60 minutes. ChatGPT's study mode can quiz you on any topic, but OpenAI's pages don't describe licensing-exam question banks. See the best AI apps for USMLE for more exam tools.

How to check an AI medical answer

Checking an AI medical answer takes the same five steps whether it comes from ChatGPT, AskMed or another tool. First, find the source behind the claim you plan to act on; a claim with no source is unverified until you find it in a guideline, a drug label or a peer-reviewed paper. Second, open the source and confirm that it exists and says what the sentence says, for the same group of patients, since a trial in adults doesn't answer a question about children. Third, check the date, because a guideline updated after a model's training data may have changed the recommendation. Fourth, check whose guidance it is: NICE, US and European guidelines can differ, so follow the one that applies where you practise. Fifth, take every drug dose from the current prescribing information or your local formulary, never from a chatbot. AskMed is built to make the first three steps fast: a link after each claim, labeled by source type, with the guideline year stated.

1. Find the source. Look for the citation behind the exact sentence you'll use, not just a list of links at the end.
2. Open it. Make sure the page exists and says what the answer says, for the same patients.
3. Check the date. A current guideline outweighs an older review, and guidance changes after a model is trained.
4. Check whose guidance it is. Follow the guideline that applies in your country.
5. Get doses from the label. Use the current prescribing information or your formulary.

Bottom line

For medical questions, AskMed is the stronger choice over ChatGPT for doctors, nurses, medical students, pharmacists and researchers. ChatGPT is a capable general assistant, and OpenAI's own help center asks users to check its search citations because results can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect. AskMed is built so that checking is fast: it searches only a fixed list of journals, guidelines, drug labels and medical references before writing, links a citation after every claim, and says so when it finds no usable source instead of answering from memory. AskMed reads official drug labels and national drug registries from many countries, gives no drug doses, and lets you filter by source type and study type with 3 to 12 sources per answer. AskMed adds question banks for 10 licensing exams, from PLAB and USMLE to NEET-PG and ENARM, and runs on iPhone, iPad, Android and the web with one account, in seven languages, with no US license or NPI needed.