Attendees were literally spilling into the aisles at the mini keynote session about the power and potential of digital health technology. 

Speaking in the context of workforce capability, Associate Professor Mark Merolli MACP, a clinician and digital health and informatics researcher from the University of Melbourne, emphasised that digital technologies are becoming paramount to physiotherapy practice. 

‘We’ve entered into that age where technology literacy, technology skills are changing the very DNA of what it means to practise in healthcare.’ 

Mark cited the work that he and colleagues undertook to explore ways of making competency with technology-supported practice more observable and accessible (doi.org/10.1080/09593985.2025.2495130). 

‘We’ve produced this world-first framework of nine entrustable professional activities for digital physiotherapy practice, developed through an international Delphi consensus across 16 countries, with 56 further nested specifications that describe the activities that a physiotherapist must be able to demonstrate in real-world actions and using health technologies.’ 

According to Mark, the entrustable professional activities framework offers a roadmap to guide those activities in areas such as tertiary education and curriculum development, clinical education and continuing professional development programming, and employer capability benchmarking. 

‘I don’t believe that being open to and embracing digital technology is about replacing our identity. 

‘It’s about extending our reach… 

‘It’s about trust. It’s about training. It’s about embracing innovation.’ 

Associate Professor Leo Ng APAM from Swinburne University of Technology and co-founder of AI-powered app Research Screener believes digital technology will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of what physiotherapists do, especially in preventive health. 

‘There are lots of different factors that can contribute to pain and there are lots of different data points, different outcome measures,’ he said. 

‘I think that technology can improve continuous remote monitoring. 

‘We will get better and more precise data [and] AI is going to be there to make sense of the data. 

‘Technology, I think, will move towards being able to listen, see and feel in physiotherapy.’ 

Leo presented the scenario of a medically trained AI receptionist, which he said ‘is already out there’, having access to medical records and potentially to individual data from wearables so it can direct patients to the right care as soon as possible. 

He also raised the idea of physiotherapists using wearable technology for measurement. 

‘Just ask them [patients] to bend down [to obtain] probably a more precise reading than goniometry,’ he said in the case of smart glasses. 

‘What if physiotherapists are wearing gloves that are like handheld dynamometers… that can actually measure strength easily?’ Echoing Mark’s earlier sentiments, Leo said that 

‘technology is here to support us, not to replace us.

‘I think people will still come see a physiotherapist.’ 

Professor Trevor Russell, who leads a research team on technology-enabled rehabilitation at the University of Queensland, described digital tools as being on a continuum of complexity, from simple apps, measurement devices and AI prediction models to fully fledged AI tools that provide clinical recommendations. 

‘There’s a heightened clinical risk and ethical considerations that we need to think about as we move up that complexity scale,’ he said, offering a scenario where something goes awry when a patient is prescribed with an AI exercise tool. 

‘Perhaps it’s the wrong recommendation; the patient doesn’t follow it properly and they hurt themselves. 

‘In this situation, who’s responsible?’ 

He described AI tools as a black box. 

‘We don’t know what happens in that algorithm to explain what comes out versus what goes in. 

‘We’re an evidence-based practice so explaining how we got to the result is perhaps as important as the result itself. 

‘Our clinical reasoning really needs to be a part of this… we need to maintain clinical oversight of that information because ultimately we are responsible for that.’