Jobs / Healthcare / 29-2057.00
Ophthalmic Medical Technicians
Assist ophthalmologists by performing ophthalmic clinical functions. May administer eye exams, administer eye medications, and instruct the patient in care and use of corrective lenses.
- US jobs
- 71,010
- Median wage
- $45,570 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of ophthalmic medical technicians?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Take and document patients' medical histories.
- Conduct tonometry or tonography tests to measure intraocular pressure.
- Operate ophthalmic equipment, such as autorefractors, phoropters, tomographs, or retinoscopes.
- Take anatomical or functional ocular measurements of the eye or surrounding tissue, such as axial length measurements.
- Measure visual acuity, including near, distance, pinhole, or dynamic visual acuity, using appropriate tests.
- Measure and record lens power, using lensometers.
- Administer topical ophthalmic or oral medications.
- Conduct visual field tests to measure field of vision.
- Assist physicians in performing ophthalmic procedures, including surgery.
- Measure corneal curvature with keratometers or ophthalmometers to aid in the diagnosis of conditions, such as astigmatism.
- Conduct ocular motility tests to measure function of eye muscles.
- Clean or sterilize ophthalmic or surgical instruments.
Other job titles for this occupation (24)
Certified Ophthalmic Medical Technician (Certified Ophthalmic Medical Tech) · Certified Ophthalmic Surgical Assistant · Certified Ophthalmic Technician (COT) · Certified Ophthalmic Technician-Surgical Assistant (COT-SA) · Health Technician (Health Tech) · Ophthalmic Assistant · Ophthalmic Diagnostic Sonographer · Ophthalmic Medical Assistant · Ophthalmic Medical Technician (Ophthalmic Medical Tech) · Ophthalmic Tech (Ophthalmic Technician) · Certified Retinal Angiographer · Eyecare Advisor · Medical Technician (Medical Tech) · Ocular Care Technician (Ocular Care Tech) · Ocular Care Technologist · Ophthalmic Aide · Ophthalmic Scribe · Ophthalmology Assistant · Ophthalmology Technician (Ophthalmology Tech) · Optical Technician (Optical Tech) · Optometric Assistant · Optometric Technician (Optometric Tech) · Paraoptometric · Retinal Angiographer