■ MODERATE RISK ■ Healthcare
No — but AI is coming for the diagnostic and orthotics side of the practice, which is a big chunk of the billing. The procedures, the surgery, and the diabetic foot care stay firmly human.
“AI gait analysis and 3D-printed insoles. Your foot rubs were overrated.”
Our AI replacement risk score — how we score jobs
A podiatrist's week is a mix that automation slices unevenly. On one end: gait analysis, diagnostic imaging review, and orthotics prescription — all being eaten fast. Pressure-plate systems and smartphone-based gait apps now quantify biomechanics that used to require a trained eye watching someone walk down a hallway, and 3D-printed custom insoles can go from foot scan to finished product with barely a clinician in the loop. Retail kiosks already sell 'custom' orthotics with no doctor involved at all, which undercuts one of private practice's reliable revenue streams.
On the other end sits work that no algorithm touches: cutting out an ingrown toenail, debriding a diabetic ulcer, performing bunion surgery, managing a wound-care plan for a patient with neuropathy who can't feel their own infection. Diabetic foot care alone is a massive and growing share of podiatry — an aging, heavier population guarantees demand — and it is intensely hands-on, high-stakes work where a missed infection means an amputation. AI image analysis can flag a suspicious ulcer photo, but someone still has to probe it, culture it, and decide whether the patient in front of them will actually do the offloading regimen.
The likely shift is in practice economics rather than headcount collapse. AI handles triage, imaging reads, and orthotics fabrication; podiatrists spend more time on procedures, surgery, and complex chronic care. Solo practitioners who built their business on insole prescriptions and routine biomechanics consults feel real pressure. Surgical podiatrists and wound-care specialists barely notice. Same degree, very different decade ahead depending on which chair you sit in.
Automatability: our editorial assessment of current and near-term AI capability
Orthotics and gait analysis are being disrupted now — retail scan-and-print insoles already bypass clinics. Diagnostic AI support becomes routine by the late 2020s. But the procedural and surgical core of podiatry, plus surging diabetic foot care demand, keeps the profession itself intact well past 2040. Expect a transformed job description, not an empty waiting room.
Safer than our risk score of 49 might suggest at first glance. The score reflects real disruption to orthotics and diagnostics, not to the profession's existence. Aging populations and diabetes rates guarantee demand for procedural and wound care. The unsafe version of this career is one built mainly on insole prescriptions and routine biomechanics — that revenue is leaking to scanners and kiosks.
They'll shrink one revenue stream, not the business. Direct-to-consumer scan-and-print orthotics already exist and will get better and cheaper. But orthotics were always one service among many. Podiatrists who diversify into wound care, surgery, and sports medicine lose a product line; podiatrists whose practice was essentially an insole shop lose a lot more.
It can flag them. Image-analysis tools do a credible job spotting fractures, ulcer changes, and gait abnormalities, and patients increasingly arrive with an app's opinion. What AI can't do is probe a wound, feel a pulse, assess neuropathy hands-on, or decide on surgery. Expect AI as a screening layer in front of podiatrists, not a replacement for them.
Surgical training and wound-care expertise, bluntly. Those are the parts of the field with growing demand and no automation pathway. Get comfortable with AI diagnostic tools as instruments you interpret, and learn the business side — the practices that struggle will be the ones that ignored how orthotics economics changed.