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Professionals · code 2269

Health professionals not elsewhere classified

AI can suggest an exercise plan. It can't adapt a home for someone who can't climb the stairs.

AI barely touches five of the eight tasks, including hands-on therapy and minor foot surgery. Tracking progress and suggesting changes to the home are mostly out of its reach too.

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

This unit group covers health professionals not classified elsewhere in Sub-major Group 22: Health Professionals. For instance, the group includes occupations such as podiatrist, occupational therapist, recreational therapist, chiropractor, osteopath and other professionals providing diagnostic, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health services. In such cases tasks would include - (a) interviewing patients and conducting diagnostic tests to determine their health status, functional limitations, and the nature of physical or mental disorders, illnesses or other health problems; (b) developing and implementing treatment plans for injuries, illnesses and other physical and mental impairments; (c) evaluating and documenting patients’ progress through treatment plans, and referring patients and families to medical doctors or other health care providers for specialized, rehabilitative or other care services as needed; (d) administering therapeutic care and treatment to patients, including through application of manual and physical chiropractic and osteopathic techniques; (e) recommending environmental adaptations in the home, leisure, work and school environments on an individual or group basis to enable individuals with functional limitations to perform their daily activities and occupations; (f) planning and implementing therapeutic programmes on an individual and group basis for improving and maintaining physical, cognitive, emotional and social functioning, including through the use of arts and crafts, dance and movement, music and other recreational activities; (g) identifying and prescribing treatments for conditions affecting the foot, ankle and related structures of the leg due to illness, disease or other physical impairment, and prescribing corrective footwear and advising on foot care to manage foot ailments; (h) performing minor surgical procedures such as on the foot and ankles. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Arts therapist - Chiropractor - Dance and movement therapist - Occupational therapist - Osteopath - Podiatrist - Recreational therapist Note Although in some jurisdictions chiropractic and osteopathy are considered to have the attributes of medical specializations, practitioners in these disciplines should always be classified here.

  • podiatry assistant
  • occupational therapy assistant
  • chiropractor
  • radiographer
  • occupational therapist
  • recreational therapist
  • animal osteopath
  • kinesiologist
  • podiatrist
  • specialist chiropractor

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

81 / 100

Strongly holds up against AI

Most of this job still needs an actual human. AI would mostly be making the tea.

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: Not Exposed

135 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 19.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 19.5 = 80.5.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

This job rates 36.6 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?

Health professionals not elsewhere classified 81

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.

  • Treatment notes and progress records.
  • Drafting therapy plans.
  • Referral letters.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Assessing patients face to face.
  • Hands-on treatment.
  • Adapting plans to real homes and lives.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Remote therapy and monitoring.
  • Assistive technology and smart home aids.
  • Checking AI-assisted imaging.

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

30 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 67 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

37 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 27 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

37 How
hands-on
27 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 11 US jobs , so treat it as rough.

finger skill 36.4 · hand skill 30.6 · cramped spaces 13.2 · 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 30, against an average of 20. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 30

    Evaluating and documenting patients' progress through treatment plans, and referring patients and families to medical doctors or other health care providers for specialized, rehabilitative or other care services as needed

    Low
  2. 28

    Recommending environmental adaptations in the home, leisure, work and school environments on an individual or group basis to enable individuals with functional limitations to perform their daily activities and occupations

    Low
  3. 26

    Planning and implementing therapeutic programmes on an individual and group basis for improving and maintaining physical, cognitive, emotional and social functioning, including through the use of arts and crafts, dance and movement, music and other recreational activities

    Low
  4. 20

    Developing and implementing treatment plans for injuries, illnesses and other physical and mental impairments

    Very Low
  5. 17

    Interviewing patients and conducting diagnostic tests to determine their health status, functional limitations, and the nature of physical or mental disorders, illnesses or other health problems

    Very Low
  6. 17

    Identifying and prescribing treatments for conditions affecting the foot, ankle and related structures of the leg due to illness, disease or other physical impairment, and prescribing corrective footwear and advising on foot care to manage foot ailments

    Very Low
  7. 11

    Administering therapeutic care and treatment to patients, including through application of manual and physical chiropractic and osteopathic techniques

    Very Low
  8. 9

    Performing minor surgical procedures such as on the foot and ankles.

    Very Low

8 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
67
AI does it for you
30

Sidekick wins, by 36 points.

How good a match is this?

7 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. 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 2346, 2349, 2519, 2521, 2522, 2524, 2526

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?

Out of every 100 conversations

53
47

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. This job makes up 0.48% of the conversations.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 10 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 occupational therapists, radiographers and chiropractors be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. The most exposed tasks are documenting progress, recommending home adaptations and planning programmes, all Low; assessing and treating patients rate Very Low. AI will help with notes and plans, but the assessments and hands-on care stay human.

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 →