E604 | How AI Is Changing Physical Therapy

In this episode, Doc Danny discusses the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the physical therapy profession. He emphasizes how AI can improve efficiency in tasks such as research and document preparation, and gives examples of how AI is already being used in other professions.

Although AI is not yet advanced enough to replace human physical therapists, it has the potential to revolutionize the field with personalized treatment plans, rehabilitation exercises, assistive technologies, predictive analytics, and telehealth.

Danny suggests that physical therapists should view AI as a tool to assist them rather than a threat to their profession. He emphasizes that the human touch and expertise of physical therapists are still essential for effective rehabilitation. The use of AI can also help with documentation, which can save physical therapists up to two hours a day.

Danny further discusses the fears around AI and encourages physical therapists to be aware of its potential benefits. He also recommends joining the PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group to stay informed and to participate in the conversation with over 6,000 other clinicians.

The overall message is that physical therapists should embrace the potential of AI to improve their practice and provide better outcomes for their patients.

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Podcast Transcript

Hey, real quick, before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. If you haven't done so yet, we have monthly live trainings going on there. There's an opportunity for you to join in the conversation instead of just listening to what I have to say on this podcast, as well as the people that I bring on.

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There's about seven videos that we've curated that are the most common questions we get in the best case studies that we've found to really help you start, grow, and scale your practice up to seven figures. So if you haven't done so yet, head to Facebook request to join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group.

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So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't want to see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans, create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question. And this podcast is the answer. My name is Danny Matei and welcome to the PT entrepreneur podcast.

Hey, what's going on? Doc Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today, man, we are diving into artificial intelligence, AI for short, and all the ways in which this is starting to affect our profession, but also just business in general. And. I'm going to give you some of my thoughts on where I see AI going, at least in terms of the physical therapy profession, because I have no damn clue what's going to happen with everything else over the next next few years.

But if you're, if you've been living under a rock and you're not paying attention to anything artificial intelligence related, let me get you up to speed. So for really At least my understanding is over the last five to 10 years, there's been a very strong effort to try to develop artificial intelligence software basically.

Okay. So think of it like an application that you would have on your phone, you would download on your phone and you can utilize and it. An attempt in which it can make people more efficient and, or do things for people make decisions on their own, all kinds of things in order to help with efficiency, but also who knows what they're going to use it for in, in in other ways.

And if you look at something, for instance, like a chat GPT which is a software platform by a company called open AI. Which is also heavily backed by Microsoft. So I guess you can look at this as, Microsoft it's their way of developing artificial intelligence software. And Google has one called Bard, which is very similar as well.

I don't know if one's better than the other. I've interacted with both, but basically these are. They call them like chat bots. So these chat bots, what they allow you to do is to type in a prompt or ask a question. And essentially they aggregate information from all basically anywhere they can scrape information on the internet.

They do that and then they will respond with. Answers to the questions that you have or things that you want to look up or put something together for you, all kinds of stuff. I think a lot of people look at this as Oh man, I can get this AI to write a paper for me if I'm in high school or college or whatever, or I can use it to do my work for me. And I don't think that it's. Anywhere near that capacity, because you do have to know what you're looking at and what you're talking about. You have to have a depth of knowledge for what you're asking this, these chat bots to put together for you because a, you need to make sure you need to know if they're accurate and also They're not that refined, right?

So you can't just say Hey, write me a chapter for a book on this. And and then boom, it's published, great content. That's not the case. You might be able to use it to help you develop an outline for something, and then you can fill in the gaps from there. The ways in which you can use this is more for utilization.

Efficiency than it is for a replacement of things. And as I get into where I think, PT is, this is going to be involved with that. I'll give you a quick story in terms of how this is being used. And in fact, it's two examples. Last Friday I was hanging out at a brewery with some friends of ours and our kids were playing wall ball on the side of the the side of the brewery and I was chatting with him about about AI and he's an attorney and he has two pair paralegals that work in his private practice, just him and two paralegals, a small law practice.

And he said, man. I'm about to let one of our paralegals go because the other one has gotten really efficient at using AI to help with research and putting documents together and all these other things that they're doing to where she's basically, replacing this other person who is far less efficient and it sounds like.

He was on the fence with keeping this person anyway. But the thing that kind of pushed us over the edge was that the one paralegal he has started to be able to leverage artificial intelligence to be able to be more efficient with what she's doing on a day to day basis, so much so that she basically replaced the other person in the law practice or will in a very short period of time.

The other person that's really effectively using this is is one of my brother in law's. He is he does fractional CFO. So chief financial officer work for software companies. And, he gave me some examples of how he's using this to help with pulling reports and market research and best practices for certain things that you know, are really.

Cutting down the time in which it's taking him to put together PowerPoint presentations or pitch decks with groups they're working for. They're maybe looking for financing. And even for him, he's man, this is just, it's, he uses it every day to help. augment his I guess the work that he's doing to make him more efficient, but he still has to have very strong depth of knowledge of the areas that he's trying to utilize this with.

So he knows if something is correct or not. Told me straight up. He's oftentimes it's is not accurate. And I have to, redo something or I have to think about how to ask a question in a different way. Or I take the shell of something and then I fill it in. But even still, it's making him more efficient.

And he's able to do more work. And able to answer questions faster and all the things that are beneficial for his job with the clients that he has. So again, I think this is something that's going to leverage people that are smart, that are okay with change and are, adopting change and not necessarily replace people per se, but I think it will make people efficient in a manner where that you may need fewer people like my friend with his legal practice, right?

If one person can do the job of two Then, maybe there's no reason to have the other person. And what does that person go on to do? I'm not sure. Maybe they get a job somewhere else in a place that's not maybe as forward forward leaning in terms of using AI, maybe they change careers, maybe do something else, but here's what I can tell you that will not change anytime soon.

And the other guy that I should say, when I was talking to my lawyer friend the other guy that is was sitting with us, he is a wine distributor. So he. Owns part of a company that basically gets contracts with vineyards and they distribute these wine the wine from these vineyards all over the country.

And he chimed in, he said, Oh yeah, I'm using, and some sort of AI platform. I forget which one it was to help with invoicing. How to invoice faster. And he said about 20% of his time was taken up with, effectively creating these invoices and drafting up the things that he needed for for these agreements that they have.

And he's been able to use that really effectively to save quite a bit of time. And the thing that he said though, that I thought was so interesting was that you got to lean hard into the human. The side of things just to lean hard into the relationship side of things. And I couldn't agree more because when I look at what is not replaceable, it is the relationship side of what you do in your career the ability to connect with people, the ability to develop relationships, the ability to manage people and humans.

And that's a very valuable skill. Take that and apply it to. The field of physical therapy physical therapy is not exactly something that you can outsource to a chat bot anytime soon. You can't just come up with an algorithm for how to solve somebody's chronic pain or, whatever problem that might be.

And the hands on side of things in particular is just. So irreplaceable for how people feel when another human being that knows what they're doing is able to do some sort of manual Technique to help move improve movement in some way to alleviate pain in some way Whatever it is that you're doing like That is a very valuable skill as well as the ability to communicate with them and develop trust.

For me, when I was looking at this topic, I went straight to the source. I went straight to a chat GPT and I basically just said, Hey how do you see AI being used in the field of physical therapy? And this is exactly. What it said. It says AI has a potential to revolutionize the field of physical therapy in several ways.

Here are some possible ways AI could be used in physical therapy. Number one, personalized treatment plans. AI algorithms can be used to analyze a patient's medical history, physical abilities, and other relevant data to create a personalized treatment plan. The AI can continuously monitor the patient's progress and adjust the treatment plan as needed.

Two, rehabilitation exercise. AI powered rehabilitation exercises can be designed to help patients recover from injuries or surgeries. The AI can analyze the patient's movements and provide feedback in real time ensuring that the patient is performing the exercises correctly. Three, assistive technologies.

AI assistive technologies can help patients with disabilities. Or mobility issues to perform daily activities independently. These technologies can range from simple devices like automated pill dispensers, to more complex systems like exoskeletons to provide support and assistance for movement for predictive analytics.

AI algorithms can be used to analyze patient data, to identify trends and predict potential issues before they occur. This can help physical therapists to intervene early and prevent complications. Five telehealth. A. I. Power telehealth platforms can enable physical therapists to provide remote consultations and monitor patients remotely.

This can be especially useful for patients who live in rural areas or have difficulty traveling to appointments. Overall, A. I. Has the potential to enhance the quality of Care in physical therapy and improve patient outcomes. However, it's important to note that AI should be used as a tool to assist physical therapists rather than replace them.

The human touch and expertise of physical therapists are still crucial for effective rehabilitation. And that is straight from me asking one question. So pretty. Damn good response I would say and I'm gonna touch on these a little bit. So number one personalized treatment plans, and I would also Lump rehabilitation exercises into there as well.

So imagine, you have a software that can look at somebody's movement patterns It takes the deficiencies that are found through a gamut of tests and it spits out a corrective exercise program that they should do this is actually not that far off from what people are Already doing with certain apps where, people are, putting in like movement restrictions that they have, or maybe even they're taking videos and they're giving them an idea of okay, you have limited overhead position, do this, and this.

So we're already there. Like we're not too far off. As far as assisted technologies go, we already have quite a lot of these. And they're being used in a number of ways. Whenever I was in the military, I worked at a place called the Center for the Intrepid whenever I was in the when I was in the army station in San Antonio.

And this is basically a amputee and limb salvage hospital clinic, I guess you'd say, but it's just the most advanced rehab place I've ever been in my life. It was, a wartime built center where we were really working with people that had wartime injuries of amputations and significant limb damage where they were doing limb salvage techniques and using a lot of assistive technology, things that were helping them produce force transfer force.

Different types of legs replacement legs, residual limbs that they had chips built into them to continue to be able to walk in a somewhat, normal normal way and just made massive progress, right? With technology, with these things. This probably will help in some ways with the production of that, but this is already happening as well.

Just. on a probably slightly different scale. Predictive analytics, that's great. You can predict whether somebody is going to get hurt or not. This would be great for something like ACL tears in, young girls that are playing that are playing sports. We know there are much higher risk for injury than any other subgroup that I'm aware of as far as ACL tears are concerned and then telehealth that's cool.

Maybe you can have a little robot that's telehealth thing. Somebody doing a console or something like that, or they're helping with efficiency. As far as that goes I don't really see any of these being dramatic changes. In healthcare, because here's the thing I can spit out a personal plan for you.

I can give you an assistive device to use. I can predict whether you're going to have surgery or have an injury or not at a, higher percentage, but it doesn't necessarily mean that somebody is actually going to do anything about it. And we all know that most people are lazy. And what they need is accountability and somebody to hold them accountable that they trust and that they have rapport with.

And that's where you as a physical therapist come, into it being a very unique place where we can see a lot of people that are worried. If I was a paralegal right now. I'd probably be worried that I'm either adopting this and I'm trying to become more efficient, or I'm going to get let go like my friend with the two paralegals that he has.

So there's definitely more clerical things that are probably going to be replaced. Legal services in general. The freaking these chatbots have passed the bar. With flying colors, they're able to pretty much pump out any legal document that you might want.

Although you may not know it's what you need if you don't have a lawyer to consult about that. So there's still going to be a place for a lot of people, but when we look at the physical side of things, the ability to do hands on things, the ability to have a connection with somebody that you can build trust and get them to actually do the things that they need to do that's not going anywhere because it's not can do, whatever, single leg split squats for somebody to get, to build up strength. It's not like they can have them do, breathing work or meditation to help with stress management. It's not like they can eat food for them that's better than the food that they're eating anyway.

It's not like they, it's not like it can force them to go to sleep faster. We're still human beings that do or the hell we want for the most part. And. We're going to respond really well to another human that we trust and that we have rapport with and that is a subject matter expert. And that can be you and it should be you.

And you should also understand that there probably are going to be ways in which this can help with your own efficiency and your own accuracy. Like I think about the ability to have something that's very predictive with movement flaws and be able to like. Validate whether you should do something or something else, some sort of progression or regression to a movement aside from just, the plain eye kind of viewing that.

And there's already software where you're looking at this with biomechanics software and it's just going to get better and better. And then you have to have the skilled provider that's actually getting that person to correct that. Problem versus just like reading something, on a in an email or in an app that's giving them updates of what they should or shouldn't be doing.

The one area that I really do think that this is going to help significantly with over the next few years, and I'm not necessarily aware of any specific. Platform that is doing this just yet, but I see this in bigger software platforms where they're starting to integrate some of these AI software applications.

But when you look at something like documentation, it's such a burden to be able to effectively document. It takes a long time and it's necessary. We have to do it. So having something to where we can actually have documentation that occurs, whether it's during the visit or it can learn what parts of a visit need to be documented as you're just in the room that can actually write a note for you and then you can review it and sign it.

And maybe you modify some of it like that's definitely going to happen. It's not that far away. It's probably right around the corner. And that I would assume as somebody that was seen a fairly decent caseload that if you could save yourself, 30 minutes to two hours a day. With some of the things you have to do on the documentation side that you'd probably be all for that.

And it's not like it's taking away from what you can do as a physical therapist. If anything, it's going to allow you to spend more time with the people that are there with you versus having to cut that visit short. So you can catch up on documentation. So it doesn't just snowball on you. So these are the ways in which I see things like AI are, that are going to be integrated within our profession.

But, I think everybody can have their own take on this. It's a very interesting thing. It's something that is, it's very hard to say exactly what direction these things go. So people are very, they're very fearful of AI. I think they think of, movies like there's one called I think it's X.

X machina is how it's, I don't know how it's pronounced. X machina is what I believe the name of it, but it's about, it's basically about a guy that builds AI robots. And it's a crazy story in any way, like again, it's it ends in a kind of weird way. And I think people think of like movies like that without spoiling the movie.

It ends like that and it freaks people out. Cause they're like, Oh my God, there's going to be all these robots out here with artificial intelligence and they're going to be taking over the planet. And who knows, man, I don't know if that's, that sounds like sci fi to me. Maybe it's possible. I'm not sure.

I just view.

So we're going to happen and how we're going to use it. And this is where I think we're at with the profession, so something you should be aware of if you weren't aware of it before now, like here's, at least my take on it. You can check it out yourself. See if there's ways in which you can continue to make yourself more efficient and get better outcomes for your patient.

I'm definitely all for that. I think the one thing you do have to understand is you can you can close your eyes, you can act like this doesn't exist, but it doesn't mean that it's not affecting your business, your profession, whether you like it or not it's probably going that direction.

So probably better for you to learn about it, have some understanding of what's going on, how you can maybe use this to help be more successful yourself. And instead of just saying I'm good, it's equivalent to whenever I switched. Or whenever I was an intern, I remember we made the switch from paper documentation to a EMR where we were actually typing it into into a documentation platform.

And there was a clinician that there was at the clinic that I was at and he was like, man, I don't want to do this. I'm so much faster with paper and all this and that or whatever. Maybe he was, and that's, I'm, that's, I'm not disputing that, but from the standpoint of the business needing to go that way for all the benefits of having that electronically managed versus a whole closet full of.

Charts and things that they had to have like double locks on and all kinds of stuff Like it made a lot of sense on the business side So that person eventually begrudgingly just had to just hang up their paper documentation and move over to electronic and eventually made the switch he didn't do it willingly, but eventually he did it and I think with technology and how these are applied It's going to happen.

Don't be that guy that's trying to hold on to doing paper notes. Be somebody that's looking at, okay, be open minded. How can this apply to my job? How can this apply to my business in a way that makes sense and is is beneficial because it's probably gonna go that way anyway, probably better to be on the.

The leading side of that then the guy that's kicking and screaming, trying to keep writing his paper documentation notes. So anyway, hope you guys like this one. I did a decent amount of research to hopefully share some trends that I'm seeing in the profession with you. Obviously it doesn't just apply to business owners, but really anybody that's a physical therapist.

And look, let's be honest, I'm a physical therapist as well. I'm not somebody on here. That's just, I'm not doing this podcast for physical therapists because I think it's a great business opportunity to do so I'm doing this podcast because. I have a degree just like you do. I went to school for a long time.

I've worked with thousands of patients. I know exactly what it's like to be in the trenches day to day, both as a clinician, a business owner of a practice. And now as somebody that really works with business owners that own practices to help them on the business side, much, much more, but, I still very.

I very much remember the days of lots of patient volume and documentation and things like that. And I definitely see a clear opportunity where somebody can really make what we do more efficient, maybe decrease some of the burnout that some of you are facing with, which is excessive amounts of documentation and patient load.

And, maybe there's a place for that. I'm not sure, but that's my thoughts on it. Hopefully you like this and hopefully it's something that benefits you as you learn more about this. If you like it. share it with a with a colleague, share it with a friend, share it with somebody you think would be would benefit from it.

And if you haven't done so yet, and you're interested in getting a little bit more involved in a conversation with about 6, 000 other clinicians, head over to Facebook and join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. All you gotta do is look it up. You gotta fill in a little bit information so we can check you out and make sure you're a clinician.

But if you haven't done that yet, and you want to have a bit more of a back and forth, that's a great place to do it. So as always, guys, thanks so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.

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