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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3259

Health associate professionals not elsewhere classified

AI can update the records. The hands-on care is still yours.

Recording patients' health and treatment is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Examining patients and treating them it barely touches.

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

This unit group covers health associate professionals not classified elsewhere in Sub-major Group 32: Health Associate Professionals. For instance, the group includes occupations such as HIV counsellor, family planning counsellor and other health associate professionals. In such cases tasks would include - (a) interviewing and examining patients to obtain information on their health status and the nature and extent of injury, illness or other physical or mental health condition; (b) providing information and counselling to patients and families about certain health conditions, prevention and treatment options, treatment adherence, and personal behaviours that can affect health outcomes; (c) administering therapeutic care and treatment to patients; (d ) performing certain basic clinical procedures such as administration of HIV antibody tests or insertion of intrauterine devices; (e) dispensing and advising on dietary supplements, antiretroviral and prophylaxis medications, and other health care products; (f) monitoring patients’ progress through treatment plans, and identifying signs and symptoms requiring referral to a medical doctor or other health professional; (g) recording information on patients’ health status and responses to treatment in medical record-keeping systems; (h) sharing information with other health care providers when required to ensure continuing and comprehensive care. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Anaesthesia technician - Family planning counsellor - HIV counsellor - Respiratory therapy technician Note Occupations included in this unit group normally require formal training in health service provision.

  • respiratory therapy technician
  • assistant clinical psychologist
  • osteopath
  • dietetic technician
  • anaesthetic technician

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

70 / 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

245 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 30.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 30.5 = 69.5.

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 50.8 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, and for work like this robots are the bigger question.

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 associate professionals not elsewhere classified 70

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.

  • Patient records.
  • Health information for patients.
  • Sharing information between teams.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Examining and treating patients.
  • Monitoring progress.
  • Counselling people through treatment.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Digital health records and apps.
  • Remote monitoring.
  • More care outside hospitals.

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 66 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

51 how hands-on

A fair part of this job is hands-on, so robots would be needed for that part, not just software.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Physical work where helping and caring for people is a big part of the job. For care work, whether a machine could do the movements is only half the question. The other half is whether anyone wants one to. The US data counts helping workmates too, so a few trades end up here.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 36 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

51 How
hands-on
36 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, helping and caring for others

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 14 US jobs , so treat it as rough.

finger skill 41.2 · hand skill 37.2 · cramped spaces 29.6 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7

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 60, against an average of 31. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 60

    Recording information on patients' health status and responses to treatment in medical records-keeping systems

    Medium
  2. 35

    Dispensing and advising on dietary supplements, antiretroviral and prophylaxis medications, and other healthcare products

    Low
  3. 33

    Providing information and counselling to patients and families about certain health conditions, prevention and treatment options, treatment adherence, and personal behaviours that can affect health outcomes

    Low
  4. 27

    Sharing information with other health care providers when required to ensure continuing and comprehensive care.

    Low
  5. 25

    Monitoring patients' progress through treatment plans, and identifying signs and symptoms requiring referral to a medical doctor or other health professional

    Very Low
  6. 22

    Interviewing and examining patients to obtain information on their health status and the nature and extent of injury, illness or other physical or mental health condition

    Very Low
  7. 12

    Administering therapeutic care and treatment to patients; (d ) performing certain basic clinical procedures, such as administration of HIV antibody tests or insertion of intrauterine devices

    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
66
AI does it for you
30

Sidekick wins, by 35 points.

How good a match is this?

4 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 2522, 3112, 4113, 4233

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

62
38

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 0.32% 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 health associate professionals be worried?

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

The records are moving. Recording patient information is rated Medium, and dispensing advice, counselling and sharing information are Low; monitoring, examining and treating patients rate Very Low. AI takes on documentation; care stays 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 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 65. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →