Test patient vision
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 5 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Inspecting Equipment, Structures, or Materials (4.A.1.b.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 5 occupations that perform it.
- Examine eyes, using observation, instruments, and pharmaceutical agents, to determine visual acuity and perception, focus, and coordination and to diagnose diseases and other abnormalities, such as glaucoma or color blindness.
- Perform comprehensive examinations of the visual system to determine the nature or extent of ocular disorders.
- Perform diagnostic tests or measurements, such as motor testing, visual acuity testing, lensometry, retinoscopy, and color vision testing.
- Assess refractive conditions of eyes, using retinoscopes.
- Assess abnormalities of color vision, such as amblyopia.
- Examine patients with problems related to ocular motility, binocular vision, amblyopia, or strabismus.
- Conduct ocular motility tests to measure function of eye muscles.
- Assess refractive condition of eyes, using retinoscope.
- Perform vision screening of children in schools or community health centers.
- Conduct visual field tests to measure field of vision.
- Collect ophthalmic measurements or other diagnostic information, using ultrasound equipment, such as A-scan ultrasound biometry or B-scan ultrasonography equipment.
- Measure visual acuity, including near, distance, pinhole, or dynamic visual acuity, using appropriate tests.
- Conduct binocular disparity tests to assess depth perception.
- Operate ophthalmic equipment, such as autorefractors, phoropters, tomographs, or retinoscopes.
- Conduct tests, such as the Amsler Grid test, to measure central visual field used in the early diagnosis of macular degeneration, glaucoma, or diseases of the eye.
- Conduct tonometry or tonography tests to measure intraocular pressure.
- Perform fluorescein angiography of the eye.
- Conduct low vision blindness tests.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
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.
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
5 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 “Administer diagnostic tests to assess patient health”. 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.