Copilot Health Preview Puts Hospital Charts Outside HIPAA

Microsoft’s help page now says Copilot Health is temporarily unavailable for some Copilot users while the company folds the feature into a new Copilot app. The May 29, 2026 preview still limits the product to U.S. adults 18 and older on Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Premium.

Work accounts are not eligible. The same help page tells people the product is a direct-to-consumer wellness app, which is why HIPAA does not apply to the hospital charts it can pull in.

Copilot Health Is Dark for Some Users

The outage sits on a short calendar. Microsoft opened a waitlist that opened in March, moved Copilot Health into preview on May 29, then warned in mid-August that Health might vanish for some people during an app merge.

THE ROAD FROM WAITLIST TO OUTAGE

1. March 12, 2026: Microsoft AI opens a U.S. waitlist for Copilot Health and names HealthEx, Function, and more than 50 wearables as data sources.
2. May 29, 2026: Preview opens at Copilot.microsoft.com/health for Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, and Premium subscribers aged 18 and over in the United States.
3. August 13, 2026: Microsoft begins merging consumer and work Copilot apps and says Copilot Health may be missing for some users mid-migration.
4. August 18, 2026: Podcasts, Group Chat, and consumer Deep Research retire; Health is not on that kill list, but Support still flags it as temporarily down for some accounts.

Microsoft says it is working to bring Health back as soon as possible and that heavy Health users would be moved later so the feature would be waiting when they landed in the new app. The help page still carries the unavailable banner, so anyone who connected records in May can find the tab gone while the rest of Copilot keeps running.

Preview Access Stops at Personal and Family Plans

The May 29 post is blunt about the door. Copilot Health is in preview for Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, and Premium subscribers aged 18 and over in the United States, and work accounts are not eligible. Availability is subject to change as Microsoft watches how people use it.

That gate is the product, not a footnote. Free Copilot can still field a health question in ordinary chat, which Microsoft says already happens well over 50 million times a day across its consumer products. The dedicated Health space, the records connectors, and the wearable hooks sit behind a paid consumer plan.

Microsoft Copilot’s own account posted the same limits on May 29, including the work-account ban and the line that availability can change.

https://x.com/Copilot/status/2060375612171194430

A January 2026 Microsoft AI review of over half a million Copilot health and wellbeing chats found people were already past trivia. Nearly 1 in 5 of those conversations involved a person’s own symptoms, test results, or conditions. About 40% asked about symptoms, conditions, and treatments. 10.9% of the health questions were attempts to interpret symptoms or lab and imaging results. Emotion and wellbeing questions rose from 3.4% in the morning and daytime to 5.2% at night.

The preview sells itself as the place those 3 a.m. questions go once they get serious. It also asks for a Microsoft 365 bill, a U.S. address, and an 18th birthday before it will open the door.

HealthEx Feeds Hospital Charts Into Copilot

The chatbot is the front. The records move through other companies. Microsoft’s March 12 Copilot Health launch post said the product can draw activity, sleep, vitals, and other trends from over 50 wearable devices including Apple Health, Oura, Fitbit, and more, plus visit summaries, medication lists, and test results from over 50,000 U.S. hospitals and provider organizations through HealthEx, and comprehensive lab results from Function.

The May preview post narrowed the wearable pitch to Apple Health first, with more on the way. Microsoft Support still describes a growing list of electronic health records and wearables such as Apple Health. Treat the 50-device list as the March design and Apple Health as the preview’s confirmed starting pipe.

WHERE COPILOT HEALTH GETS ITS DATA

HealthEx’s March 12 press release is more specific about the rails. It describes TEFCA individual access services spanning 12,000+ organizations and 72,000+ unique connections, plus identity checks that use biometrics and a government ID. Setup, it says, takes minutes, after which a person grants Copilot Health permission to read labs, medications, conditions, and clinical notes, and can revoke that access.

HealthEx also says the same setup creates a health wallet that, with extra consent, can be reused in other HealthEx-powered apps so the person does not repeat the ID dance. Connecting records for Copilot Health is therefore also an on-ramp to HealthEx’s network, not only a Microsoft toggle.

Priyanka Agarwal, M.D., MBA, co-founder and CEO of HealthEx, put the clinical case in that release.

As a physician, I’ve seen firsthand how hard it is for people to get a comprehensive picture of their own health. Records are scattered, visits are short, and too many people delay care because they don’t know where to start.

Priyanka Agarwal, M.D., MBA, co-founder and CEO of HealthEx, March 12, 2026 press release

Peter Hames, VP Health at Microsoft AI, said in the same release that the HealthEx collaboration is how people bring a comprehensive health history to Copilot Health securely and on their own terms. Function’s CEO, Jonathan Swerdlin, said on March 16 that members already use clinician-reviewed lab results to personalize AI chat, and that the Copilot Health connector extends that habit.

Microsoft Support adds a quieter limit. If a provider is missing, HealthEx’s network does not include every organization, even at over 50,000. Connected record and wearable data is not stored inside Copilot Health. It is read in the moment for chats and homepage insights. Disconnect a source and Copilot Health loses that feed, except for whatever already landed in past conversations.

Does Copilot Health Comply With HIPAA?

Microsoft’s answer is no, and it says so in plain language. Copilot Health is a direct-to-consumer wellness product, and HIPAA does not apply to most direct-to-consumer wellness products. The help page then lists Microsoft’s own promises: security policies, no model training on this data, no ads or marketing use, and no sale to insurers, employers, or advertisers.

That is a legal category, not a small print quirk. Hospital and clinic records live under HIPAA while they sit with a covered provider. Once a person authenticates and consents, HealthEx can stream those charts into a consumer Copilot tab that Microsoft files as wellness. The encryption and isolation still matter. They are not the same as a HIPAA business-associate contract.

Support also describes memory. Copilot Health can store a Health Profile (age, sex, history, goals) and keep health conversation activity for 18 months by default. People can turn personalization and memory off, edit or delete the profile in chat, or wipe everything from Copilot settings under Health, including the consent to collect. On first use, Copilot Health can offer a one-time pass over older Copilot chats to seed that profile, and the user chooses what, if anything, to keep.

Insights on the Health homepage come from the profile, connected wearables, and prior Health conversations. Microsoft says those insights are generated only for that person. The more someone shares, the more tailored the cards get, which is also how a wellness app becomes a standing copy of a medical life Microsoft does not have to treat as clinical data.

Microsoft Already Closed a Health Vault in 2019

Copilot Health is not Microsoft’s first personal health record. HealthVault opened in October 2007 as a web store for health and fitness information, later adding the United Kingdom. On April 5, 2019, Microsoft told users the service would shut on November 20, 2019, and that data left in accounts would be deleted. People who wanted a copy had to move it themselves, with Microsoft pointing some of them toward other personal health record vendors.

HealthVault died as a destination people had to remember to visit. Copilot Health puts the same idea, charts plus wearables plus a longitudinal file, inside an assistant Microsoft says already sees tens of millions of health questions a day. The interface is new. The bet is familiar: if the records live next to the questions, people will keep paying for the account that holds both.

The 2019 shutdown is the part of the pitch Microsoft does not reprint. Anyone who stored years of labs in HealthVault watched a clock run out. Copilot Health’s delete control is better advertised, and the default 18-month chat window is at least written down. The company can still take the feature offline while it restyles the Copilot app, which is what the current Support banner describes.

What Can You Connect in the Preview?

When the tab is actually up, Microsoft’s May 29 list is short and concrete. A Health Profile holds background and goals. Wearables start with Apple Health. Records come from those 50,000-plus U.S. provider organizations. Insights are supposed to ask follow-up questions. Answers are supposed to cite trusted organizations and, at times, Harvard Health cards. Care navigation searches local clinicians by specialty, language, gender, insurance, and location.

Microsoft says those answers draw on thousands of health organizations across 50 countries, chosen with National Academy of Medicine source principles. The May post also says an external panel of over 250 physicians from more than 24 countries feeds clinical guidance and safety notes, up from the “over 230” figure on the March 12 launch post.

Patient groups were in the room. Microsoft says it worked with AARP, which represents 38 million older Americans, and the National Health Council, which represents over 180 patient advocacy groups. Member organizations of the Council, Microsoft wrote, called Copilot Health “meaningful progress toward more trusted, patient-centered digital health experiences.” The Council’s longer line was that engaging patients, caregivers, and advocates from the start was shaping a tool around real-world needs.

THE GUARDRAILS MICROSOFT LISTS

• Isolated chats: Copilot Health conversations are not shared with the rest of Copilot.
• No training: Information and data shared with Copilot Health are not used to train AI models.
• No ad profile: Microsoft says it will not use this data to target ads or sell it to insurers, employers, or advertisers.
• Encryption: Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, with a user switch to disconnect wearables and records.
• ISO/IEC 42001: Copilot Health has the world’s first AI management system standard, published in December 2023 as ISO/IEC 42001:2023, which checks how an organization governs AI, not whether a given lab reading is correct.

Microsoft’s compliance documentation lists Microsoft Copilot Health among AI services in scope for that ISO 42001 certification, alongside GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Dragon Copilot. The certificate is a process audit. It does not turn a wellness chatbot into a clinic, and Microsoft’s own preview disclaimer says Copilot Health is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent disease and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.

PREVIEW LIMITS AT A GLANCE

• Who gets in: U.S. residents 18 or older on Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Premium.
• Who does not: Work accounts, people under 18, and anyone outside the United States.
• Where to try it: Copilot.microsoft.com/health, when the tab is not marked unavailable.
• What can change: Features, experiences, and usage limits during preview, including whether the product is reachable at all.

The distrust around “safe and secure” is rational on those terms. Microsoft is asking people to pipe hospital charts into a consumer assistant it legally describes as a wellness product, then proving seriousness with an AI management certificate and a physician panel. Those are real controls. They are also the controls you build when HIPAA is not in the room.

Health Went Quiet During the Copilot App Merge

On August 13, 2026, Microsoft started folding its consumer and work Copilot apps into one branded Microsoft Copilot. Personal, work, and school sign-ins share the new shell, with chats still split by account type. Consumer Podcasts, Group Chat, and Deep Research were scheduled to go away on August 18. Copilot Health was not retired. It was warned as a feature that might be missing in the middle of the move.

That is a strange place to leave a product that holds visit notes and lab results, even if those records are only read at query time. A wellness tab can be dark for a week and the company calls it migration. A clinic portal that vanished mid-chart would be an incident. Copilot Health is built to look like the second and legally sit with the first.

Microsoft still says the preview will gain features over time and that access may widen. Until the Support banner comes down, the honest status is narrower: a paid U.S. Microsoft 365 preview that can see more than 50,000 providers’ charts through HealthEx, that does not claim HIPAA, and that Microsoft has already pulled from some accounts so it can ship a single Copilot app.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Microsoft’s Copilot Health preview, its data partners, and Microsoft’s published privacy and access terms. It is informational only and is not medical advice, a diagnosis, a treatment plan, or a privacy-law opinion. Copilot Health is not a substitute for care from a licensed clinician, and nothing here should be used to decide whether to connect medical records, change medication, or delay a visit. Readers should consult a physician, nurse practitioner, or other qualified health professional about their own care, and a qualified privacy attorney if they need advice on HIPAA or consumer health-data rights. Figures, eligibility rules, and the “temporarily unavailable” status reflect Microsoft and partner pages as retrieved for this story and can change during the preview.