When sports physiotherapist Daniel Patterson APAM worked in pro sport as a young physiotherapist, the multidisciplinary team that surrounded him included medical staff who were always on hand to write prescriptions and referrals for imaging or for specialist care when needed. 

The patient arrives with an MRI report in one hand and a smartphone in the other. Before you’ve even performed a single provocation test, they present you with a neatly bulleted ‘recovery road map’. 

This isn’t a collection of disparate Google searches. 

Compliance with exercise programs is something that most physiotherapists and their patients struggle with. 

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.’ 

In Steve’s presentation, ‘The future of health’, he explored the accelerating pace of change and placed physiotherapists at the centre of the opportunities that lay ahead.

According to The Australian Financial Review, an NDIS participant’s bid to increase her $202,000 support package was rejected in part because two physiotherapists had used AI tools to help draft reports submitted as evidence. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t coming to physiotherapy—it’s already here. 

AI is embedded in how we communicate, automate workflows and, increasingly, deliver patient care. 

I am excited to be developing the APA’s next strategic plan so early in my tenure. In my view, strategic development is as much about the process as it is about the outcome. 

The pathway to our 2025 strategic plan has relied on diverse voices both within and beyond our organisation, encompassing feedback from our staff, board members, membership base and key stakeholders. 

Pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain (PPGP) is a common complication of pregnancy affecting between 23 and 65 per cent of pregnant women worldwide. 

Distinct from low back pain, it affects the pelvic joints—in particular, the pubic symphysis and sacroiliac joints.