A pilot AI-powered physiotherapy clinic has yielded ‘fantastic’ results in East Anglia, according to an NHS chief executive.
Matthew Winn, chief executive a at Cambridge Community Services NHS Trust and Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust, praised impact of the Flok Health initiate on patients and staff.
‘It’s been fantastic to see the impact the Flok Health pilot has had for our patients and staff. Thousands more people are getting faster access to expert physiotherapy support, waiting lists have been cut by more than half and our clinical teams have more time to focus on those with complex needs.’
He added: ‘It’s exciting to see how innovation like this, introduced safely and thoughtfully can truly transform the way we deliver care. We’re now looking forward to rolling Flok out more widely across the trust so even more people can benefit from quicker, high-quality MSK support closer to home.’
The digital clinic provides NHS patients with same-day appointments for back pain through an app on their smartphones. In its first large-scale pilot in England last year, the clinic more than halved waiting lists for back pain and reduced waiting times for all MSK conditions by just under a half (44 per cent) in fewer than 10 weeks.
Following this success, the AI clinic has been rolled out in 11 NHS areas, including Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Airedale, South Yorkshire (Doncaster, Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield), Northamptonshire and three London boroughs.
As a result, more than 2.4m patients in these areas can access digital physiotherapy around-the-clock, helping to cut waiting times and support people.
‘Thousands more people are getting faster access to expert physiotherapy support, waiting lists have been cut by more than half and our clinical teams have more time to focus on those with complex needs’ [Matthew Winn]
Changing times
The expansion comes in the wake of the publication of NHS England’s Medium Term Planning Framework in October 2025. It urged NHS trusts to consider where digital solutions, such as for musculoskeletal treatment, could be deployed at pace, on condition that products and services have appropriate regulatory approval (typically Class IIa).
Flok Heath says it the only digital physiotherapy provider in the UK or Europe with Class IIa Medical Device clearance under EU Medical Device Regulations. It’s also the only AI system in the UK or Europe which has been approved to deliver end-to-end diagnostic triage and treatment pathways autonomously, without human intervention.
Finn Stevenson, co-founder and chief executive at Flok Health, said: ‘Our goal is to continue to deliver gold-standard MSK care at population scale, enabling patients to access care immediately, whilst freeing up clinical capacity for patients who want or need to see a clinician face-to-face.’
Latest analysis
Flok’s patients reportedly see an average improvement in MSK-HQ score of 6.16 points, with anything above 5 considered statistically and clinically significant.
The digital physiotherapy service is seeing more patients from deprived backgrounds, on average, than the equivalent NHS face-to-face physiotherapy services operating in the same regions. Factors such as travel, paid time away from work, caring commitments and inflexible appointment times can be more exclusionary than access to smartphones and the internet.
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