Charted: Which Health Care Jobs Overlap Most With AI?

How much of a health care job can AI already help with? Microsoft researchers analyzed 200,000 U.S. conversations with the Copilot chatbot from 2024 and scored 785 occupations on how much of their work people were already doing with AI, and how successfully.

Key Takeaways

- Information and paperwork jobs scored highest: genetic counselors and health information technologists (0.31), pharmacists (0.28) and medical records specialists (0.26).

- Physicians fell in the middle. Psychiatrists, family medicine and internal medicine physicians scored 0.16 to 0.17, close to the median for all U.S. jobs (0.14).

- Radiologists scored 0.14, right at the median, despite frequent predictions that AI will replace them. The study measures chatbot use, not specialized imaging software.

- Hands-on care scored lowest: orthopedic surgeons (0.08), anesthesiologists (0.04), nursing assistants (0.03) and orderlies (0.00).

Note: The AI applicability score runs from 0 to 1. It reflects the share of an occupation's work activities where people used AI, weighted by how often the AI completed the task and how much of the activity it covered. It measures overlap with AI, not job loss; the authors say their data do not mean AI performs all of any occupation's work.