How AI Could Extend Physiotherapy Beyond The Clinic

For many patients recovering from surgery, injury or stroke, the most important part of rehabilitation begins after they leave the hospital. Yet this is often where recovery becomes most difficult.

Home exercises account for the majority of physiotherapy, but without regular supervision, many patients struggle to stay on course. Long travel distances, transport costs, work commitments and uncertainty about whether exercises are being performed correctly can all undermine recovery. In Tanzania, where there are estimated to be fewer than 225 physiotherapists serving a population of more than 70 million people, maintaining consistent rehabilitation presents an even greater challenge.

It is this gap between clinic visits and home-based recovery that Together PT, an early-stage digital health startup, hopes to address.

The company has developed a platform that uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to help physiotherapists monitor patients remotely after an initial in-person consultation. Rather than relying on wearable devices or specialised equipment, the system runs on any ordinary mobile device with a camera, allowing patients to continue their rehabilitation while therapists review progress and make adjustments remotely.

Precision motion tracking without specialised hardware

Interestingly, the idea did not begin in healthcare.

According to Together PT co-founder Roi Lezer, the technology was originally developed to analyse movement in competitive swimming, where precise motion tracking without wearable sensors was a key objective. As the founders explored other applications, they realised the same technology could help solve one of rehabilitation’s biggest challenges.

“The foundation of Together PT comes from high-precision motion tracking,” says Lezer . “When we looked at physiotherapy, we realised that while clinical care is highly effective, roughly 85 percent of recovery relies on unsupervised home exercises. Once patients leave the clinic, they lose real-time feedback, form validation and clinical oversight. We built Together PT to solve one of healthcare’s biggest scalability challenges by extending the therapist’s presence into the patient’s home, while maintaining clinical precision.”

Instead of replacing physiotherapists, the platform is designed to extend their reach. During the patient’s first clinic visit, the system captures the therapist’s guidance and exercise instructions. As patients continue their exercises at home, the application monitors their movements and provides feedback based on the therapist’s recommendations, while allowing clinicians to review progress asynchronously.

Designed for East Africa’s infrastructure and patient context 

For Lezer, accessibility was a key design principle from the outset.

“In emerging markets, requiring specialised wearables or clinic hardware immediately excludes the vast majority of patients,” he explains. “By running computer vision locally on the mobile device, we eliminate the need for expensive equipment, while making the platform resilient to intermittent connectivity and power fluctuations. High-quality physical therapy should not require specialised hardware.”

Lezer highlights that this choice reflects a broader conviction about the purpose of healthcare. “Health is a basic human right and it has to be treated that way,” he says. “The technology lets us deliver high quality health care at the price of a commodity.”

The company’s decision to begin validation in Tanzania was shaped by both the country’s rehabilitation needs and its broader digital health ambitions.

Martha Machumu, who is leading Together PT’s business development activities in Tanzania, says one of the biggest misconceptions about physiotherapy is that recovery happens inside the clinic.

“In reality, recovery happens at home through daily exercises, consistent follow-through and ongoing support,” she says. “Patients often leave the clinic with good intentions, but practical barriers, such as transport costs, long travel distances, work schedules and family responsibilities make it difficult to maintain rehabilitation. Many are also unsure whether they are performing exercises correctly or whether they are making meaningful progress. Without ongoing support, motivation declines and adherence suffers.”

She argues that digital tools have the potential to strengthen continuity of care, provided they are designed around local realities rather than adapted as an afterthought.

“Localization is not optional. It is everything,” Machumu says. “A digital health solution cannot succeed if it ignores the realities of the people it is designed to serve. Supporting local languages, working on low-end devices and functioning offline are essential. Technology becomes meaningful when it adapts to the environment, not when the environment is forced to adapt to the technology.”

Expanding care within existing clinical workflows 

The startup says it has also sought to minimise the additional workload for physiotherapists by allowing patient monitoring to take place through an asynchronous dashboard instead of requiring continuous virtual consultations.

According to Lezer, the objective is not to ask clinicians to work longer hours, but to enable them to support more patients using the same resources.

“Addressing workforce shortages is not about working longer hours. It is about giving existing therapists the tools to extend their reach with more effective treatment,” he says. “Monitoring home care is handled asynchronously, allowing clinicians to review patient progress, adjust exercise parameters or send encouragement within their existing workflow. Instead of requiring health systems to double their specialist workforce overnight, we want to help existing clinicians scale high-quality care to more patients.”

Measuring success through human impact

Together PT is currently in its pre-seed stage and is preparing to begin in-clinic usability and functionality validation in Tanzania. Over the coming year, the company plans to evaluate clinical outcomes through a structured pilot, align its work with Tanzania’s National Rehabilitation Strategic Plan and further localise the platform for wider adoption.

For the founders, however, success will not be measured by downloads or user numbers.

“Looking ahead, success will be measured by real-world human impact,” says Lezer. “If a therapist in Dodoma or Mwanza can help a patient return to work or play with their child weeks earlier without increasing the clinician’s workload, then we will know we’ve created something meaningful. By demonstrating that value in Tanzania, we hope to establish a model for accessible rehabilitation that can be replicated across Africa.”