Claude for Healthcare: Anthropic Launches HIPAA Compliance and Medical Record Integration

Anthropic is taking a major step forward in the healthcare sector with the launch of Claude for Healthcare, a solution specifically designed to meet the regulatory requirements of the US medical sector. The announcement, made in January 2026, introduces HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)-compliant infrastructure, connectors to critical medical databases, and even direct integration with personal health records via Apple Health and Android Health Connect.

This development marks a strategic shift for Anthropic, which is moving from general-purpose AI to highly specialized industry solutions. But what about European compliance? And what role do sovereign alternatives such as Charlie play in this changing landscape?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the U.S. regulation governing the protection of personal health data. For an AI solution to be used legally by hospitals, health insurers, or medical professionals in the United States, it must guarantee:

• Confidentiality of medical data (Protected Health Information - PHI)
• Strict access controls and audit logs
• Encryption of data at rest and in transit
• A Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with cloud providers

With Claude for Healthcare, Anthropic now offers this HIPAA-ready infrastructure, enabling US medical institutions to use Claude for sensitive use cases such as analyzing patient records, reviewing prior authorizations, or triaging patient messages.

Anthropic highlights several concrete use cases in the healthcare sector:

• Prior Authorization: Accelerate the validation of medical authorization requests by cross-referencing CMS coverage policies with patient records.
• Claims Appeals: Support in drafting appeals for denied reimbursements.
• Patient message triage: Coordinating care by analyzing and prioritizing patient requests.
• Clinical documentation: Assistance with writing clinical notes and medical reports.

Anthropic has developed specific connectors to access US medical databases:

• CMS Coverage Database: Database maintained by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), containing local and national coverage policies.
• ICD-10 Registry: Registry of ICD-10 diagnostic codes, essential for medical billing and disease coding.
• National Provider Identifier (NPI) Registry: National registry of healthcare professional identifiers, used for verification and accreditation.
• PubMed Access to over 35 million biomedical articles for evidence-based research.

These connectors give Claude direct access to structured data that is critical for clinical and administrative workflows.

Anthropic is also expanding Claude for Life Sciences' capabilities with new connectors:

• Medidata: Clinical trial management platform providing access to enrollment and follow-up data.
• ClinicalTrials.gov: Public database of clinical trials registered in the United States.
• bioRxiv & medRxiv: Preprint servers for the rapid dissemination of scientific results that have not yet been peer-reviewed.
• Open Targets, ChEMBL, ToolUniverse: Databases for pharmacology research and drug discovery.
• Owkin Pathology Explorer: Analysis of medical tissue images for digital pathology.

One of the most notable innovations in this announcement is the direct integration of personal health records for Claude Pro and Claude Max users. Subscribers can now connect:

• Apple Health and Android Health Connect: Fitness data, heart rate, sleep, etc.
• HealthEx and Function: Platforms for accessing electronic medical records (laboratory results, prescriptions, medical history).

Anthropic emphasizes that this data is processed with explicit opt-in consent and is never used to train models. Users retain complete control over their medical data.

For European researchers and institutions, the use of Claude for Healthcare raises the issue of transferring health data to the United States, even with a HIPAA BAA. The GDPR considers health data to be sensitive special category data, subject to stricter rules than those of HIPAA.

Anthropic is also introducing specialized Agent Skills for the healthcare sector, including:

• FHIR Development: Support for the development of applications using the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard, the most widely adopted medical data exchange format.
• Prior Authorization Review Templates: Preconfigured templates to automate the review of prior authorization requests.
• Clinical Trial Protocol Generation: Generation of clinical trial protocols that comply with FDA and NIH requirements.

These Agent Skills enable developers to create automated workflows for complex tasks, reducing development time and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Anthropic has published benchmark results showing the improvements of Claude Opus 4.5 on medical tasks:

• MedCalc: Improved accuracy of medical calculations (dosages, clinical scores).
• MedAgentBench (Stanford): Completion rate of medical tasks by an autonomous agent.
• SpatialBench: Spatial analysis in biology, particularly for interpreting tissue images.
• Reduction in hallucinations: Improved reliability of responses to factual medical questions.

These results position Claude Opus 4.5 as one of the most effective models for medical tasks, although it remains essential to always have the answers validated by a qualified healthcare professional.

Although Claude for Healthcare is HIPAA compliant, this does not automatically mean it is GDPR compliant. Here are the main differences:

For European hospitals, universities, and research laboratories, the use of Claude for Healthcare requires a thorough legal analysis to ensure GDPR compliance.

Faced with the challenges of digital sovereignty and GDPR compliance, European solutions are emerging to offer an alternative to American tools.

Charlie : The sovereign scientific AI agent

Charlie, developed by Emerit Science in France, offers a different approach:

• Hosting in France: All data remains within European territory.
• Native GDPR compliance: Designed from the outset to comply with the European regulatory framework.
• Public databases: Access to PubMed, PubMed Central, Espacenet (European patents), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO).
• French language support: French-language interface and customer support for French-speaking institutions.
• Transparency: Open science approach with systematic citation of sources.

Beyond Charlie, the European medical AI ecosystem is growing:

• Mistral AI (France): Open-source language models with sovereign hosting option.
• Aleph Alpha (Germany): Multimodal AI with sovereignty guarantees for governments.
• Gaia-X: European initiative for a sovereign and interoperable cloud.
• European Health Data Space (EHDS): European Commission project to facilitate the secure sharing of health data within the EU.

The launch of Claude for Healthcare marks a significant step forward in the adoption of AI in the medical sector. With comprehensive HIPAA infrastructure, connectors to critical databases, and even the integration of personal medical records, Anthropic offers a technically impressive solution for the US market.

However, for European institutions, issues of GDPR compliance, data transfer outside the EU, and digital sovereignty remain major obstacles. The US CLOUD Act and the invalidation of the Privacy Shield create legal uncertainty that cannot be ignored.

It is in this context that European alternatives such asCharlie take on their full meaning. By offering a solution hosted in Europe, natively GDPR-compliant, and focused on public databases accessible to all, Charlie represents a complementary path for institutions that cannot or do not want to transfer their sensitive data to the United States.

The future of medical AI will likely be multipolar: powerful American solutions for the US market, and sovereign alternatives for Europe and other regions concerned about their digital autonomy.