AI exposure: Pharmacy Aides
Record drugs delivered to the pharmacy, store incoming merchandise, and inform the supervisor of stock needs. May operate cash register and accept prescriptions for filling.
Reading this score
computedAt 28.9% of weighted task load, Pharmacy Aides sits at the 51th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 52.2% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 17 tasks it averages 1.65 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Answer telephone inquiries, referring callers to pharmacist when necessary, at 83.3%. The least is Deliver medication to treatment areas, living units, residences, or clinics, at 0.0%. A gap of 83.3% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare support occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 19 roles in the group is 11.4%, and only 1 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 17 tasks, 8 are currently banded exposed, 1 assisted and 8 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.84 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.65 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.78 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 1.54 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.35 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.52 | 0-3 |
Task by task
17 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer telephone inquiries, referring callers to pharmacist when necessary. | 83.3% | 16.7% | 0.0% | 4.75 | exposed |
| Calculate anticipated drug usage for a prescribed period. | 60.0% | 40.0% | 0.0% | 4.20 | exposed |
| Provide customers with information about the uses, effects, or interactions of drugs. | 53.7% | 29.6% | 16.7% | 3.82 | exposed |
| Perform clerical tasks, such as filing, compiling and maintaining prescription records, or composing letters. | 49.6% | 37.9% | 12.5% | 4.16 | exposed |
| Process medical insurance claims, posting bill amounts and calculating copayments. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.75 | exposed |
| Prepare prescription labels by typing or operating a computer and printer. | 40.0% | 35.0% | 25.0% | 4.66 | exposed |
| Operate cash register to process cash or credit sales. | 40.0% | 35.0% | 25.0% | 4.52 | exposed |
| Greet customers and help them locate merchandise. | 37.5% | 25.0% | 37.5% | 4.11 | exposed |
| Accept prescriptions for filling, gathering and processing necessary information. | 23.3% | 26.7% | 50.0% | 4.42 | assisted |
| Prepare, maintain, and record records of inventories, receipts, purchases, or deliveries, using a variety of computer screen formats. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.45 | untouched |
| Receive, store, and inventory pharmaceutical supplies or medications, check for out-of-date medications, and notify pharmacist when inventory levels are low. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.44 | untouched |
| Unpack, sort, count, and label incoming merchandise, including items requiring special handling or refrigeration. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.07 | untouched |
| Maintain and clean equipment, work areas, or shelves. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.24 | untouched |
| Restock storage areas, replenishing items on shelves. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.11 | untouched |
| Compound, package, and label pharmaceutical products, under direction of pharmacist. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.03 | untouched |
| Operate capsule or tablet counting machine that automatically distributes a certain number of capsules or tablets into smaller containers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.42 | untouched |
| Deliver medication to treatment areas, living units, residences, or clinics, using various means of transportation. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.08 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.