Will AI replace Pharmacists?
AI reaches some of this job’s work, but most of it stays with people.
36/100
Moderate exposure
More exposed to AI than 53% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 5% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 49% of the work
What the job involves
Dispense drugs prescribed by physicians and other health practitioners and provide information to patients about medications and their use. May advise physicians and other health practitioners on the selection, dosage, interactions, and side effects of medications.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Already happening(1)
- Provide information and advice regarding drug interactions, side effects, dosage, and proper medication storage.
Within reach(10)
- Collaborate with other health care professionals to plan, monitor, review, or evaluate the quality or effectiveness of drugs or drug regimens, providing advice on drug applications or characteristics.
- Plan, implement, or maintain procedures for mixing, packaging, or labeling pharmaceuticals, according to policy and legal requirements, to ensure quality, security, and proper disposal.
- Maintain records, such as pharmacy files, patient profiles, charge system files, inventories, control records for radioactive nuclei, or registries of poisons, narcotics, or controlled drugs.
- Refer patients to other health professionals or agencies when appropriate.
- Publish educational information for other pharmacists, doctors, or patients.
and 5 more
Out of reach(10)
- Review prescriptions to assure accuracy, to ascertain the needed ingredients, and to evaluate their suitability.
- Work in hospitals or clinics or for Health Management Organizations (HMOs), dispensing prescriptions, serving as a medical team consultant, or specializing in specific drug therapy areas, such as oncology or nuclear pharmacotherapy.
- Analyze prescribing trends to monitor patient compliance and to prevent excessive usage or harmful interactions.
- Provide specialized services to help patients manage conditions, such as diabetes, asthma, smoking cessation, or high blood pressure.
- Assess the identity, strength, or purity of medications.
and 5 more
Also called
Clinical Pharmacist · Hospital Pharmacist · Pharm D (Pharmacy Doctor) · Registered Pharmacist · Pharm D · Retail Pharmacist · Apothecary · Druggist
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