Investigate diseases or parasites to determine cause and risk factors, progress, life cycle, or mode of transmission.

“Investigate diseases or parasites to determine cause and risk factors, progress, life cycle, or mode of transmission.” is a core task performed by Epidemiologists. Among the occupation's 15 rated tasks, workers place it 14th by importance (#2 most important). About 95% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Research biological or ecological phenomena. in Getting Information

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E2. Exposure with tools — software built on top of a language model (not the model alone) could cut the time by at least half.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.50. Automation potential label: T2.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Communicate research findings on various types of diseases to health practitioners, policy makers, and the public. · importance 4.5
• Oversee public health programs, including statistical analysis, health care planning, surveillance systems, and public health improvement. · importance 4.3
• Monitor and report incidents of infectious diseases to local and state health agencies. · importance 4.2
• Educate healthcare workers, patients, and the public about infectious and communicable diseases, including disease transmission and prevention. · importance 4.2
• Plan and direct studies to investigate human or animal disease, preventive methods, and treatments for disease. · importance 4.2
• Provide expertise in the design, management and evaluation of study protocols and health status questionnaires, sample selection, and analysis. · importance 4.1
• Identify and analyze public health issues related to foodborne parasitic diseases and their impact on public policies, scientific studies, or surveys. · importance 3.9
• Plan, administer and evaluate health safety standards and programs to improve public health, conferring with health department, industry personnel, physicians, and others. · importance 3.8
• Conduct research to develop methodologies, instrumentation, and procedures for medical application, analyzing data and presenting findings. · importance 3.7
• Consult with and advise physicians, educators, researchers, government health officials and others regarding medical applications of sciences, such as physics, biology, and chemistry. · importance 3.5
• Supervise professional, technical, and clerical personnel. · importance 3.4
• Teach principles of medicine and medical and laboratory procedures to physicians, residents, students, and technicians. · importance 2.9
• Prepare and analyze samples to study effects of drugs, gases, pesticides, or microorganisms on cell structure and tissue. · importance 2.7
• Standardize drug dosages, methods of immunization, and procedures for manufacture of drugs and medicinal compounds.

See all tasks on the Epidemiologists page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-5422,
  title  = {Investigate diseases or parasites to determine cause and risk factors, progress, life cycle, or mode of transmission.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-5422}
}