Advise patients on effects of health conditions or treatments
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
Software drafts well and sends at volume, and vertical support agents now resolve a large share of inbound questions end to end. What does not transfer is the relationship, and the judgment about when a message should not be sent at all.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Routine communication and explanation |
| Jobs that do it | 12 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Providing Consultation and Advice to Others (4.A.4.b.6) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 12 occupations that perform it.
- Advise patients about recommended courses of treatment.
- Advise patients to comply with treatment plans.
- Provide information and advice regarding drug interactions, side effects, dosage, and proper medication storage.
- Counsel patients about drug regimens and possible side effects or interactions with other substances, such as food supplements, over-the-counter (OTC) medications, or herbal remedies.
- Communicate likely outcomes of medical diseases or traumatic conditions to patients or their representatives.
- Counsel patients or others on the background of neurological disorders including risk factors, or genetic or environmental concerns.
- Counsel outpatients or other patients during office visits.
- Advise athletes on ways that substances, such as herbal remedies, could affect drug testing results.
- Dispense herbal formulas and inform patients of dosages and frequencies, treatment duration, possible side effects, and drug interactions.
- Educate patients regarding treatment plans, physiological reactions to treatment, or post-treatment care.
- Counsel patients and families on communication strategies and the effects of hearing loss.
- Provide genetic counseling in specified areas of clinical genetics, such as obstetrics, pediatrics, oncology and neurology.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for routine communication and explanation, and what it costs.
Drafting replies costs nothing beyond the assistant you already pay for. Only move to a support agent billed per resolution once the inbound volume is large enough that the per-resolution price beats the hour it takes you.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
12 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Advise patients or clients on medical issues”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.