Gather medical information from patient histories
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
An agent can find, read and summarise the sources this work depends on, and it can cover far more of them than a person would ever open. What it does not do is decide which sources deserve trust, or what the findings mean for your situation.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Research and retrieval work |
| Jobs that do it | 15 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Web, data and docs, Generalist agents |
| O*NET activity | Getting Information (4.A.1.a.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 15 occupations that perform it.
- Diagnose health problems by reviewing patients' health and medical histories, questioning, observing, and examining patients and interpreting x-rays.
- Collect and document patients' pre-anesthetic health histories.
- Obtain information from medical records, medical staff, family members and the patients, themselves, to assess patients' capabilities, needs and interests.
- Read prescription, measure arterial blood gases, and review patient information to assess patient condition.
- Gather client information from sources such as case documentation, client observation, or interviews of client or family members.
- Gather diagnostic data from sources such as case documentation, observations of clients, or interviews with clients or family members.
- Obtain patients' histories from electronic records, patient interviews, dictated reports, or by communicating with referring clinicians.
- Document or review patients' histories.
- Document or review comprehensive patients' histories with an emphasis on occupation or environmental risks.
- Obtain medical records from previous physicians or other health care providers for the purpose of patient evaluation.
- Obtain and record accurate patient history, including prior test results or information from physical examinations.
- Gather information on patients' illnesses and medical history to guide the choice of diagnostic procedures for therapy.
- Obtain a customer's previous record, or verify a prescription with the examining optometrist or ophthalmologist.
- Compile medical care and census data for statistical reports on diseases treated, surgery performed, or use of hospital beds.
- Interview patients or review medical records to obtain comprehensive patient or family medical histories, and document findings.
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 research and retrieval work, and what it costs.
Research is the one shape of work that needs no integration at all, so a single $20 assistant with browsing is the whole stack. Add a crawler only once you are pulling hundreds of pages on a schedule rather than reading a few.
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.
Generalist agents
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
15 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Anesthesiologist Assistants
- Art Therapists
- Chiropractors
- Diagnostic Medical Sonographers
- Genetic Counselors
- Health Information Technologists and Medical Registrars
- Music Therapists
- Naturopathic Physicians
- Nuclear Medicine Technologists
- Opticians, Dispensing
- Preventive Medicine Physicians
- Radiologists
- Recreational Therapists
- Respiratory Therapists
- Urologists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Collect information about patients or clients”. 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.