How physiotherapists can own the AI revolution – award winning insights from Rachael Lowe

Physiopedia co-founder Rachael Lowe delivered an award-winning presentation at APTA CSM 2026 in Anaheim, USA, challenging physiotherapists to engage with AI intentionally – as critical co-investigators, not passive recipients.

Last week, Rachael Lowe, co-founder of Physiopedia, took to the stage at APTA CSM 2026 in Anaheim, USA, to deliver a presentation that prompted curiosity and many discussions over the following days. The platform presentation Navigating the Inevitable Future of AI in Physiotherapy with Intention and Integrity was selected as the Best Platform within the Academy of Leadership and Innovation (ALI) by the ALI Research Committee, a well-deserved recognition that speaks to the urgency of the conversation she sparked.

Rachael opened with a provocation that set the tone for everything that followed: AI hasn’t arrived as some distant future threat. It’s already embedded in the tools physiotherapists use every day, from social media algorithms and Google search results to electronic medical records and continuing education platforms. The unsettling reality is that many of us don’t even know when we’re being influenced by it.

You can’t exercise professional judgement over something you don’t know exists.

That invisible influence, quietly shaping clinical decisions without our awareness, is what Rachael described as our most dangerous blind spot.

From there, the presentation unpacked five critical realities facing the profession. The first is the invisibility challenge: AI is already shaping what evidence you find, what your patients read, and how clinical decisions are framed. Closely linked is the oversight dilemma, we’re told to maintain human oversight of AI, but what does that actually mean when a system processes thousands of data points in milliseconds across datasets we’ll never see? Rachael posed the hard questions the profession urgently needs to answer: who is ultimately responsible when something goes wrong, and what does the paper trail look like when critical clinical decisions are made by an AI? The replacement threat is more subtle than most people assume. It isn’t about robots doing manual therapy. AI is narrowing the performance gap between novices and experts, and the physiotherapists who will thrive are those who intentionally position themselves as the experts who direct, interpret and add meaning to AI tools. The message was clear:

AI won’t replace physical therapists. Physical therapists who use AI will replace those who don’t.

Then there’s the education crisis. We are currently using curricula created before AI to produce graduates who will enter workplaces where AI is integrated into everything they do. The curriculum gap is widening every day we don’t act, and if we don’t teach students to work with AI critically and effectively, we’re setting them up to fail. Finally, the leadership gap: technology companies are building AI tools for physiotherapy right now, without physiotherapists at the table. They’re making decisions about what matters based on what’s profitable or technically feasible, not what’s clinically meaningful.

If we’re not at the table where these decisions are made, we’re on the menu.

Rachael’s call to action was empowering rather than alarming. This isn’t about every physiotherapist becoming an AI expert, it’s about being intentional. Start with awareness, find out what AI you’re already using in your daily practice. Build evaluation skills, learn to ask the right questions about how AI tools work, where they fail, and what the business models behind them look like. And critically, engage with AI as a tool you direct, not one that directs you. Think of it not as a complicated technology you operate, but as a conversation partner you engage with critically. Be a co-investigator, not a passive recipient.

You can let AI happen to you.

Or you can own it.

For educators, this means finding ways to teach students to question and evaluate AI outputs rather than simply accept them, much as we encourage students to critically evaluate research evidence. And for everyone in the profession, it means getting involved in the conversations and regulatory frameworks being built around AI in healthcare right now. Physiotherapists need to be in the room where these decisions are made, not as afterthoughts, but as essential voices. If our profession doesn’t actively shape what AI governance looks like, someone else will define what physiotherapy looks like in an AI-transformed healthcare system.

The future isn’t something that happens to us. It’s something we create. Your move….

What move will you make? View full presentation here.

Rachael’s presentation is a timely reminder that the future of AI in physiotherapy will be shaped by those who choose to engage with it actively and critically. Whether you’re a clinician, educator, or leader, now is the time to get involved – in your practice, in your institution, and in the profession-wide conversations that will define what AI-augmented physiotherapy looks like.