AI exposure: Medical Assistants
Perform administrative and certain clinical duties under the direction of a physician. Administrative duties may include scheduling appointments, maintaining medical records, billing, and coding information for insurance purposes. Clinical duties may include taking and recording vital signs and medical histories, preparing patients for examination, drawing blood, and administering medications as directed by physician.
Reading this score
computedAt 20.3% of weighted task load, Medical Assistants sits at the 36th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 63.2% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is verification cost. Across this occupation's 20 tasks it averages 2.02 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, checking the output costs more than producing it. Where an undetected error is expensive, dangerous or irreversible, the economics change. Someone has to verify the work, and verifying can cost as much as doing it. This is the friction most likely to fall as tools for checking improve.
The most exposed thing this job does is Schedule appointments for patients, at 73.3%. The least is Set up medical laboratory equipment, at 0.0%. A gap of 73.3% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare support occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 19 roles in the group is 11.4%, and only 3 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 20 tasks, 6 are currently banded exposed, 2 assisted and 12 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.48 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.85 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 1.48 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 1.98 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.41 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.02 | 0-3 |
Task by task
20 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schedule appointments for patients. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.21 | exposed |
| Contact medical facilities or departments to schedule patients for tests or admission. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.01 | exposed |
| Keep financial records or perform other bookkeeping duties, such as handling credit or collections or mailing monthly statements to patients. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 3.56 | exposed |
| Perform general office duties, such as answering telephones, taking dictation, or completing insurance forms. | 42.5% | 32.5% | 25.0% | 4.54 | exposed |
| Record patients' medical history, vital statistics, or information such as test results in medical records. | 40.0% | 35.0% | 25.0% | 4.73 | exposed |
| Greet and log in patients arriving at office or clinic. | 37.5% | 25.0% | 37.5% | 4.57 | exposed |
| Explain treatment procedures, medications, diets, or physicians' instructions to patients. | 35.0% | 40.0% | 25.0% | 4.73 | assisted |
| Authorize drug refills and provide prescription information to pharmacies. | 23.3% | 26.7% | 50.0% | 4.44 | assisted |
| Collect blood, tissue, or other laboratory specimens, log the specimens, and prepare them for testing. | 15.0% | 22.5% | 62.5% | 4.67 | untouched |
| Inventory and order medical, lab, or office supplies or equipment. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.13 | untouched |
| Interview patients to obtain medical information and measure their vital signs, weight, and height. | 10.0% | 27.5% | 62.5% | 4.76 | untouched |
| Perform routine laboratory tests and sample analyses. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.60 | untouched |
| Clean and sterilize instruments and dispose of contaminated supplies. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.76 | untouched |
| Prepare treatment rooms for patient examinations, keeping the rooms neat and clean. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.68 | untouched |
| Show patients to examination rooms and prepare them for the physician. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.63 | untouched |
| Help physicians examine and treat patients, handing them instruments or materials or performing such tasks as giving injections or removing sutures. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.62 | untouched |
| Prepare and administer medications as directed by a physician. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.47 | untouched |
| Change dressings on wounds. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.36 | untouched |
| Operate x-ray, electrocardiogram (EKG), or other equipment to administer routine diagnostic tests. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.95 | untouched |
| Set up medical laboratory equipment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.74 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.