A new generation of training equipment is showing up in physiotherapy practices – chrome-finished, digital and sometimes with a screen attached. At first glance, the equipment looks more professional than ever.
But much of that equipment was never designed for what a physiotherapy practice needs to deliver: safely and measurably improve patients with specific, sometimes complex movement problems.
getback Clinical Director Geoffrey Mackay says there is an uncomfortable truth in a health sector that is scrutinised more closely than ever by insurers and patients.
‘Much of the equipment now standing in rehabilitation and medical fitness rooms was, at its core, developed for the fitness industry and later relabelled “medical.”’
‘Multi-function strength stations, pneumatic machines and smart circuit-training systems are good examples. They’re robust, look fresh and fit the feel of a modern gym. For general conditioning, they work perfectly well.’
The gym-floor legacy
Mackay says the problem starts as soon as the need becomes more specific.
‘A patient with chronic low back pain, a post-operative shoulder, or whiplash symptoms doesn’t need a general strength exercise that “should be fine” for the spine.’
‘That patient needs isolated, controlled movement, at exactly the right load, within a safe range of motion, and with objective measurement data that shows whether the treatment is actually working.’
Generic equipment, however modern, is rarely built for that. Fixation is often insufficient to rule out compensatory movement, and the software — where it exists at all — is built to count reps and calories, not track clinical progress.
Speed versus specificity
Smart circuit concepts that have become popular in recent years also appear efficient: a full training round in half an hour. But efficiency isn’t the same as clinical depth.
‘A circuit that moves everyone through the same sequence of movements isn’t built to tell the difference between a discopathy and a facet joint problem,’ Mackay says. ‘It’s unlikely to give therapists the fine-grained control an individual rehabilitation pathway requires.’
It’s in this exact space that getback Australia and healthcare technology partner David Health Solutions have been making a difference together for over 20 years.
‘Our exercise therapy devices isolate joint-specific movement — from the spine to the shoulder, hip and knee — with fixation validated through research,’ Mackay says.
‘Target muscles are activated while others are kept at rest. Every session produces objective measurement data on strength and mobility, benchmarked against reference values, so the therapist can adjust a program based on facts.’
With oversight by a therapist, the getback technology platform automatically translates that data into a progressive protocol, including pain monitoring — to create a tailored program rather than a training schedule that’s the same for everyone.
Why this matters for patients
The ability to measure and track patient outcomes goes to the heart of what allied health practices are grappling with right now: being able to demonstrate that a treatment works.
Mackay says the question practice owners should be asking isn’t ‘which equipment looks the most professional,’ but ‘which equipment helps me deliver demonstrably better care, with more evidence.”’
‘Equipment borrowed from the fitness industry can have a place in a practice for general conditioning, there’s nothing wrong with it.’
‘But at the clinical heart of physiotherapy, where specificity and measurability make the difference between a patient who returns to work and one who keeps living with symptoms, generic isn’t enough.’
‘We believe our patients deserve equipment designed from the biomechanics of the joint, not from the gym floor. That’s been the underlying principle of our rehabilitation and exercise therapy programs for over 20 years.’
