AI physiotherapy
Reading: First NHS physiotherapy clinic run by AI to start this year, The Guardian, 9 June 2024.
A pretty big deal. I may be reading too much into what it can do, but having seen my GP’s (excellent) physiotherapist recently, I am intrigued.
As part of a series of three-month pilot studies between May and December 2023, more than 1000 NHS staff suffering from back pain self-referred to an AI physiotherapist for treatment.
All of those surveyed patients from the NHS pilot said their experience with Flok had been at least equivalent to seeing a human physiotherapist, and 57% of patients said they thought the AI experience was better. [Link added]
I suspect this is a big decision tree plus support materials for a set of conditions, combined with some nice generative voice/video on top. I don’t know. You’d think there’s a good opportunity to assess movement and strength from video, but that’s not suggested.
Their T&C describe the services as:
Our Services comprise the provision of multidisciplinary musculoskeletal treatment for non-specific low back pain with or without associated leg symptoms. These symptoms may be acute or chronic. Assessment and treatment is primarily delivered in the form of interactive videos, which continuously adapt to based on multiple choice answers or inputs that you provide. We also offer telehealth appointments with members of our clinical team (this can be a doctor or a physiotherapist) where we determine that a more in depth consultation may be necessary or relevant as part of your treatment
Sounds pretty sensible.
Looking at their privacy policy, they use AWS for transcription. Possibly for feedback, or perhaps some LLM integration. There’s certainly plenty of talking and listening during physio consults to make this an interesting direction.
The idea of having regular consults with some form of physio sounds great. Certainly I can imagine an app being more effective than the print-out of exercises you might get. A bit of nudging and a deadline for the next appointment is going to help motivate.