{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/radiologic-technologists-and-technicians/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Radiologic Technologists and Technicians", "soc_code": "29-2034", "category": "Healthcare", "us_employment": 230490, "median_annual_wage": 80110 }, "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "contested": false, "near_boundary": true, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 15, "embodiment": 18, "liability_shield": 13, "trust_premium": 11, "judgment_accountability": 10 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Positioning a hip-fracture patient for a cross-table lateral, or coaxing a trauma patient into a swimmer's view when they cannot lift an arm, is improvised manual work per body habitus and injury — the digitisable parts (AEC, DR post-processing, protocol presets, dose tracking) have already been automated, which is why this is 15 and not 18.", "embodiment": "You are in the room, moving portable units through ED bays and ICUs, transferring patients, palpating landmarks, and wearing lead while doing it — an uncontrolled environment with an immobile, bleeding, or combative subject, which is about as embodied as diagnostic imaging gets short of surgery.", "liability_shield": "ARRT certification plus state licensure in most states means your credential number attaches to the exam and to the dose delivered, and a state radiation-control board can sanction you personally for a repeat-heavy or unshielded exam — but the diagnostic call and the order sit with a physician, so you carry procedural accountability rather than the interpretive liability that would push this past 15.", "trust_premium": "The patient interaction is real and matters — explaining a barium swallow, calming someone claustrophobic in a CT bore, verifying pregnancy status — but it is a single-encounter relationship with a stranger who will not ask for you by name next time, which caps it near the middle.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide when to repeat, when a patient cannot hold still enough to justify the dose, and when the ordered view will not answer the clinical question and radiology needs a call — genuine discretion, but bounded by written protocols, the radiologist's order, and ACR technique standards, which is why this sits at 10 and not in the teens." }, "rationale": "The core of this job is physical: positioning an anxious, immobile, or injured patient on a table, shielding them, adjusting tube angle and technique factors, and getting a diagnostically usable image on the first try — none of which language models touch and none of which current robotics can do in a busy ED. AI is genuinely eating the adjacent layers: protocol selection, dose optimization suggestions, image quality flagging, and the radiologist's read are all being automated, which compresses the tech's decision space rather than the tech's body. Certification (ARRT) and state licensure are required in most states, and radiation-safety accountability sits with a named human.", "outlook": "Demand grows with an aging population and imaging volume; the job survives largely intact but tilts toward advanced modalities and procedural work while plain-film-only roles get squeezed by throughput automation.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Closing the state licensure gap: as of now roughly a dozen states (e.g., FL/TX have licensure, but states like Idaho, Missouri, North Carolina lack general radiographer licensure). Passage of the federal CARE Act (Consistency, Accuracy, Responsibility and Excellence in Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy Act, reintroduced in multiple Congresses) or state-by-state licensure bills would make a named licensed operator legally mandatory nationwide, plus NRC/Agreement-State rules naming the technologist as the individual accountable for dose delivered under an AI-generated protocol.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "A Joint Commission or ACR accreditation requirement that an AI-suggested dose/protocol modification be accepted and initialed by the credentialed technologist before exposure, rather than auto-applied by the scanner — the imaging analogue of pharmacist countersignature. ACR AI-QA registries and the FDA's push on 'human in the loop' for autonomous imaging devices are the visible precursors.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Task-mix shift is real here and has two tiers: if AI takes protocol selection and image-quality flagging, what remains is the hard tier — trauma/pediatric/bariatric positioning, non-cooperative patients, portable exams in the ICU, contrast reaction recognition and first response. Formal recognition of this via advanced-practice credentials (ARRT Radiologist Assistant / RPA scope expansion, already licensed in a handful of states) would put consequential calls under ambiguity formally on the tech.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Same two-tier mechanism: automation of throughput and QC work leaves the residual day weighted toward physically unrepeatable exams and patient management. Watch for hospital staffing models that pool 'routine outpatient' scans under autonomous positioning aids while keeping ED/OR/ICU techs — the remaining role is more resistant than the average one today.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "trust_premium has no plausible route: patients do not choose or pay for a specific technologist, the exam is ordered by a physician and billed as a facility service, and no buyer-side preference mechanism exists. Do not expect movement there." }, "adjudication": { "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict", "outcome": "corroborated", "run_totals": [ 67, 67 ], "run_verdicts": [ "SAFE", "SAFE" ] }, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2019, "emp": 207360, "wage": 60510 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 206720, "wage": 61900 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 216380, "wage": 61370 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 215820, "wage": 65140 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 221170, "wage": 73410 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 223460, "wage": 77660 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 230490, "wage": 80110 } ], "from": 2019, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 11.2, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }