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Professionals · code 2230

Traditional and complementary medicine professionals

AI can summarise the research. The consultation is still personal.

Research and lifestyle advice are mostly out of AI's reach. Examining patients and carrying out treatment it barely touches.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Traditional and complementary medicine professionals examine patients, prevent and treat illness, disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments and maintain general health in humans by applying knowledge, skills and practices acquired through extensive study of the theories, beliefs and experiences, originating in specific cultures. Tasks include - (a) conducting physical examinations of patients and interviewing them and their families to determine their health status; (b) developing and implementing treatment plans for physical, mental and psychosocial ailments using applications such as acupuncture, ayurvedic, homeopathic and herbal medicine; (c) evaluating and documenting patients’ progress through treatment plans; (d) providing health, nutrition and lifestyle advice to individuals, families and communities; (e) prescribing and preparing traditional medicines, such as herbal, plant, mineral and animal extracts, to stimulate the body’s capacity for self-healing; (f) exchanging information about patients with other health care workers as needed to ensure continuing and comprehensive health care; (g) conducting research into traditional and complementary medicines and treatments and disseminating findings such as through scientific papers and reports. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Acupuncturist - Ayurvedic practitioner - Chinese herbal medicine practitioner - Homeopath - Naturopath - Unani practitioner Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Chiropractor - 2269 - Osteopath - 2269 - Acupuncture technician - 3230 - Ayurvedic technician - 3230 - Herbalist - 3230 - Homeopathy technician - 3230 - Scraping and cupping therapist - 3230 - Village healer - 3230 - Witch doctor - 3230 - Acupressure therapist - 3255 - Hydrotherapist - 3255 - Shiatsu therapist - 3255 - Faith healer - 3413 Notes Occupations in traditional and complementary medicine for which competent performance requires an extensive understanding of the benefits and applications of traditional and complementary therapies, developed as the result of extended formal study of these techniques as well as human anatomy and elements of modern medicine, are classified in Unit Group 2230: Traditional and Complementary Medicine Professionals. Those occupations whose practice requires a less extensive understanding based on relatively short periods of formal or informal education and training, or informally through the traditions and practices of the communities where they originated, are included in Unit Group 3230: Traditional and Complementary Medicine Associate Professionals. Practitioners working in the singular application of approaches to herbal medicines, spiritual therapies or manual therapeutic techniques are excluded from Unit Group 2230.

  • complementary therapist

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

68 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure

261 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 7 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 32.4 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 32.4 = 67.6.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 28.9 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Traditional and complementary medicine professionals 68

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Research summaries.
  • Health advice materials.
  • Patient records.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Examinations and consultations.
  • Hands-on treatments.
  • Building trust with patients.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Online consultations.
  • Regulation and evidence standards.
  • Working alongside mainstream healthcare.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

28 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 64 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

29 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 33 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

29 How
hands-on
33 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs .

finger skill 45.1 · hand skill 36.6 · cramped spaces 18.3 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 49, against an average of 32. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 49

    Conducting research into traditional and complementary medicines and treatments and disseminating findings such as through scientific papers and reports.

    Low
  2. 39

    Providing health, nutrition and lifestyle advice to individuals, families and communities

    Low
  3. 37

    Exchanging information about patients with other health care workers as needed to ensure continuing and comprehensive health care

    Low
  4. 36

    Evaluating and documenting patients' progress through treatment plans

    Low
  5. 27

    Prescribing and preparing traditional medicines, such as herbal, plant, mineral and animal extracts, to stimulate the body's capacity for self-healing

    Low
  6. 22

    Developing and implementing treatment plans for physical, mental and psychosocial ailments using applications such as acupuncture, ayurvedic, homeopathic and herbal medicine

    Very Low
  7. 19

    Conducting physical examinations of patients and interviewing them and their families to determine their health status

    Very Low

7 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
64
AI does it for you
28

Sidekick wins, by 36 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2522

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.05% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

51
49

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 3 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should complementary medicine practitioners be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

Parts of it are changing. Research, lifestyle advice, sharing information, recording progress and preparing remedies are the most exposed tasks, all Low; treatment plans and examinations rate Very Low. AI may help with information and records; practice is hands-on and relationship-based.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →