The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA), the 26,000+ member strong industry body for some of the world’s most qualified physiotherapy practitioners, has announced the launch of a national initiative to assess the impact of physiotherapy intervention in the private practice setting.
The study, which is likely to involve thousands of consenting Australian patients includes the collection, aggregation and analysis of de-identified patient reported outcome data collected systematically from the profession nationwide.
This uniquely wide-ranging study of Australia’s population, known for its active lifestyle and devotion to sports, could help to shed light on the impact of physiotherapy treatment by utilising existing technology such as Physitrack.
Says Anja Nikolic, APA CEO: ”We already know that physiotherapy plays a critical role in improving peoples lives, but we haven’t always had access to the evidence to show this. This pilot will enable us to gather the data that we need. Our goal is to highlight to government and other third-party payers the value of physiotherapy to our healthcare system”.
Physitrack, an Apple Mobility partner and the leading provider of patient engagement solutions in the Australian physiotherapy market, is pleased that its functionality for outcome data collection will be used as part of the study.
Says Henrik Molin, CEO and co-founder of Physitrack: “This groundbreaking initiative by the APA will generate data sets that will be of interest to researchers and healthcare providers all around the world. The study will most certainly have an impact on the ability to prove the value of the physiotherapy profession to substantiate ongoing funding of services . It’s an honour to be selected as a key technology partner in this unique study of conditions that affect hundreds of million of people around the world, and that costs society hundreds of billion each year.”