DBR: Medical Examiner
Another Death by Robot but this time we’re going a little further with the whole death thing.
This is another examination of an Occupation from the US Department of Labor to see how automatable the job could be. Read the first DBR (Death by Robot) post here to catch up to what’s going on.
Remember, I break jobs down into task types and then assess how much of that task can be automated. Most tasks can’t be 100% automated and most cannot avoid some part of automation. The reality is most tasks are in the middle.
This week’s post is focusing on the job of Medical Examiner. Here’s the description of the job from the O*NET data:
Direct activities such as autopsies, pathological and toxicological analyses, and inquests relating to the investigation of deaths occurring within a legal jurisdiction to determine cause of death or to fix responsibility for accidental, violent, or unexplained deaths.
According to the Oxford research, this job is 8% likely to be automated away. Slim odds but let’s take a deeper look at the tasks to see where a Medical Examiner should plan to focus their time in the AI economy.
What did I find?
First off, this job was fascinating to me. I kind of expected this job to be in the basement of the police station. The hallway to get to the medical lab would be tinted a sickly green, lights flickering on occasion. Walking through the doors the smell of formaldehyde and stale air would greet you. The Medical Examiner would be a smart but awkward person who was more interested in the cause of death than the people around them. YES, Hollywood totally formed my perspective. (Thanks Bones & CSI)
Turns out from what I’ve learned, this isn’t just a role about Cognitive Intelligence but also requires critical Social Intelligence (again, for the task types see the original post). Hollywood lied!
What types of tasks does this job do?
Keeping in mind that 1 task can have multiple Labor Types, the high level of Social Interaction (8 tasks out of 22) made me realize that I totally did not understand this job. Let’s look at two Social Intelligence tasks and talk about what makes them automatable or not:
Inform individuals or organizations of status of findings
Testify at legal or legislative proceedings
For the first one, can’t a Medical Examiner’s notes be emailed automatically to the officers of an investigation to communicate the findings? Yes. If they are interested to learn more, a conversation can go from there but the formal documents are probably (I haven’t confirmed this but am assuming) more important than a conversation (initially). But, can I just email the family of the victim (which was stated as part of the task description). No. That takes tremendous social intelligence and emotional intelligence to do it well.
The second one is an interesting one. Why can’t a Medical Examiner just email the judge and lawyers their findings? I assumed they could not but wanted to understand why not. I found a few great articles about the purpose of testifying in court. This one by the American Psychological Association really nailed it for me. The point of the testimony is to argue. You can’t do that with an automated response. This task could be prepared for using automation but the actual execution of this task will require a human to be present, unaided and be able to navigate the minefield of legal arguments.
After analysis, I found 6 tasks that could be enhanced with automation but none could be replaced. All these tasks centered around collecting data for documentation purposes.
How would the work be automated?
In reviewing the tasks, a Digital Assistant would be the best automation tool for a Medical Examiner. Here’s the task distribution:
This is the first time a Forged Worker has appeared in DBR. A Forged Worker is a traditional hardware robot. The name comes from Jerry Kaplan’s book Humans Need Not Apply. A Medical Examiner does precision operations and in the future, Medical Examiners will have surgical machines that help them or, perhaps, do all the operation on the body for the Medical Examiner. That is distant future (I’m guessing) but still not too far away with advances in robotics.
Notice a Digital Assistant is a great help but many of the tasks are Human Only. These were tasks that could not be automated at all from my opinion. Digital Workers will help fill out paperwork in legacy systems.
Now What?
The Verdict
Get ready to have a digital sidekick Medical Examiners! The role of a Digital Assistant will grow in this job to become an ever present note taker, observer and documenter for the Medical Examiner. Digital Workers will enable the Digital Assistant to work with the legacy computer systems.
Learning an RPA tool like UiPath StudioX or Microsoft’s Power Automate Desktop could make some immediate and important impacts for a Medical Examiner.
People in this role should amplify their Cognitive Intelligence skills with a focus on Social Intelligence skills. Smart Medical Examiners will always be needed but Medical Examiners who can navigate complex conversations, create compelling content and engage their team will stand out.
For Medical Examiners (or any other professional) who are focusing on their Cognitive Intelligence skills, here’s a great article on how to have difficult conversations. Check out “How to Have Difficult Conversations When You Don’t Like Conflict” by Joel Garfinkle. This article is a good map on how to start, focus and deliver tough topics.
Do This Monday
Assess the volume of Cognitive Intelligence work you focus on vs. Social Intelligence work
Connect with your team members to understand communication styles
Explore what automation tools are available to you in your role. Connect with IT on this topic and ask them about tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and APIs. These tools can help you start your automation journey. Here are some sample questions:
Do we use any RPA tools? I read an article about automation and would like to learn more about what automation tools we have.
Does the case management system I use support automation through APIs? I read an article that said APIs can be used to send data from system to system automatically. That could help me avoid re-typing information in multiple systems.
Is there a Digital Assistant Note Taking app that could help you? Go explore and see if there is one that is a good fit for your environment. Not all note taking apps are up to medical terminology yet but they are getting better.
What do you think?
Let me know what you think below in the comments. If you are a Medical Examiner, I’d love to hear more about what you do and assess my assessment. Feel free to contact me via the About page (email is at the bottom) or connect with me on my socials.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks Artem Podrez from Pexels for the cover photo!