Six Healthcare Jobs AI Will Replace—and Eight It Won't

Healthcare's AI Job Divide

Artificial intelligence will eliminate certain healthcare positions while leaving others untouched, creating a clear divide between administrative roles and patient-facing work over the next decade.

Jesse Pines, MD, MBA, a medical AI expert affiliated with George Washington University, Drexel University, and US Acute Care Solutions, has identified specific job categories on both sides of this divide. His analysis suggests that non-technological factors—including regulatory frameworks, liability laws, and public trust—will ultimately determine how quickly AI replaces human workers.

Why it matters

Healthcare employs millions of workers whose career paths depend on understanding which skills AI can replicate and which remain uniquely human. Organizations planning workforce strategies need concrete guidance on where to invest in automation versus where to preserve human roles, while individual workers must decide whether to retrain or double down on their current expertise.

Six Jobs Facing Elimination

Pines identifies these positions as most vulnerable to AI replacement:

• Human scribe
• Medical coder
• Appointment scheduler
• Front-desk receptionist
• Insurance verification specialist
• Pharmacy technician

These roles share common characteristics: heavy documentation duties, administrative tasks, or diagnostic pattern recognition that AI systems can increasingly handle.

Eight Positions That Remain Secure

Jobs requiring high-stakes human connection, fine motor skills, and complex decision-making face minimal AI threat, according to Pines. His safe list includes:

• Registered nurse
• Paramedic/EMT
• Mental health therapist
• Midwife
• Home health aide/certified nursing assistant
• Dental hygienist

At the physician level, Pines specifically names three specialties as highly secure: surgeon, emergency medicine specialist, and dentist. Whether other physician specialties face greater risk remains unclear from his analysis.

Three Emerging Roles

AI's advancement creates new opportunities for workers who develop relevant expertise:

Clinical AI implementation specialist serves as translator between technology teams and clinical staff, overseeing deployment and evaluation of AI tools. The role requires clinical background combined with health informatics training. Average salary: $70,000 to $100,000 annually.

Healthcare AI ethics and governance analyst evaluates systems for bias, fairness, and regulatory compliance. These professionals review algorithm performance across patient populations and advise leadership on risk. Average salary: $141,139 annually.

Health AI data scientist/clinical data engineer curates and transforms clinical data into training datasets and validated models. The role demands proficiency in Python or R, SQL, machine learning frameworks, and clinical terminologies. Average salary: $122,738 annually.

The Worst Strategy

Pines warns that passive avoidance—waiting until AI tools become mandatory before learning them—represents the poorest approach for healthcare workers. Instead, he recommends actively seeking opportunities to interact with AI systems through pilot programs, continuing medical education courses, or peer-reviewed literature.

Most healthcare professionals should cultivate AI literacy to understand the technology's capabilities and limitations, regardless of whether their specific role faces immediate displacement risk.

These findings were detailed in commentary by Pines published by Forbes on July 3.