Will AI replace Medical Assistants?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
15/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 28% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 5% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 25% of the work
What the job involves
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.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Already happening(1)
- Schedule appointments for patients.
Within reach(4)
- Record patients' medical history, vital statistics, or information such as test results in medical records.
- Perform general office duties, such as answering telephones, taking dictation, or completing insurance forms.
- Contact medical facilities or departments to schedule patients for tests or admission.
- Keep financial records or perform other bookkeeping duties, such as handling credit or collections or mailing monthly statements to patients.
Out of reach(15)
- Interview patients to obtain medical information and measure their vital signs, weight, and height.
- Clean and sterilize instruments and dispose of contaminated supplies.
- Prepare treatment rooms for patient examinations, keeping the rooms neat and clean.
- Show patients to examination rooms and prepare them for the physician.
- Help physicians examine and treat patients, handing them instruments or materials or performing such tasks as giving injections or removing sutures.
and 10 more
Also called
Certified Medical Assistant (CMA) · Chiropractor Assistant · CMA · Medical Assistant (MA) · MA · Clinical Medical Assistant · Chiropractic Assistant · Autopsy Assistant
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics