Jobs / Healthcare / 29-2012.01
Histology Technicians
Prepare histological slides from tissue sections for microscopic examination and diagnosis by pathologists. May assist with research studies.
- US jobs
- Not reported by BLS
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of histology 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.
- Cut sections of body tissues for microscopic examination, using microtomes.
- Embed tissue specimens into paraffin wax blocks, or infiltrate tissue specimens with wax.
- Mount tissue specimens on glass slides.
- Stain tissue specimens with dyes or other chemicals to make cell details visible under microscopes.
- Freeze tissue specimens.
- Operate computerized laboratory equipment to dehydrate, decalcify, or microincinerate tissue samples.
- Archive diagnostic material, such as histologic slides and blocks.
- Maintain laboratory equipment, such as microscopes, mass spectrometers, microtomes, immunostainers, tissue processors, embedding centers, and water baths.
Other job titles for this occupation (13)
Clinical Histology Technician (Clinical Histology Tech) · Histologic Technician (HT) · Histologist · Histology Consultant · Histology Coordinator · Histology Technician (HT) · Histotechnician · Certified Histologic Technician (Certified Histologic Tech) · Histologic Aide · Histology Assistant · Histology Lab Assistant (Histology Laboratory Assistant) · Histology Laboratory Aide · Mohs Technician (Mohs Tech)