You're listening to the PT Pintcast,
where smart people in healthcare come to
make noise.
Here's your host, Jimmy McKay.
all right guest today is a founder a
ceo a professor all those things all at
once who's bridging the gap between
artificial intelligence and physical
therapy they're closer than you think uh
she's not just talking about the future
she's already building it from ai powered
clinical tools to health tech education
reform she's changing how healthcare sees
itself let's welcome today's guest hoda
welcome to the show
Thanks, Jimmy, for introducing me,
and I'm happy to talk and introduce
myself.
Perfect.
All right,
let me take some words out of your
mouth,
and let's see if we can get you
to explain them.
You say AI is already here.
What parts of our profession of physical
therapy and healthcare are already being
impacted,
and then most PTs might not even realize
it?
So...
Two things have been impacted very much.
One is patient monitoring.
People look at the documentation piece
separate from the patient monitoring,
but it's something that is integrated.
It's not something that people,
can separate documentation as a whole task
separate from monitoring because they are
all integrated in one task but they just
like to highlight that piece more than the
patient monitoring because we need to I
mean documentation is basically monitoring
but it's just like now it's very like
highlighted for the purpose of the
insurance companies
But basically,
this started for monitoring the progress
of your patient.
And the patient monitoring is not like a
slowly kind of like a narrowed down to
documentation.
It's part of it is also like monitoring
the hip home exercises and see the
progress of your patient.
This is something that is very much
neglected, actually, like in our practice.
in our service, in our job.
And these two pieces are the main function
of AI, these things.
Patient monitoring,
that is combination of,
I think computer vision is the main piece
for monitoring people.
RTM software,
something that you can track people at
home, like a homework system,
like when you're tracking the students for
the function and also their performance.
And the other piece is documentation that
show their progress.
And you can see like how these things
are smoothly integrated together.
The other piece that started but not also
perfectly focused is about AI literacy.
this is something very much missing.
And I thought like, I'm actually like,
I tried to be hands-on on patient
monitoring as a CEO of the HemScap,
try to bring up the pivotal PT integrated
documentation and computer vision
together.
But the other piece of like mine is
focusing on AI literacy at a school.
Like as a professor,
I try to focus my students to learn
about
how to track their patients,
how to like track their progress.
It's not just like a passing printed
version of the exercises and talk
subjectively about their progress.
So basically AI is here assisting us
actually highlighting part of our practice
that is always like a miss from like,
and we need to educate our students.
So education about the AI is also missing.
Okay.
Well, you just said that term,
so I'm going to make you sort of
explain it, right?
Because it's probably simple to you,
but not to everybody else.
You're an educator and founder.
So what, from those two perspectives,
does AI literacy actually look like for
clinicians, students, all of us?
What does AI literacy look like?
Right.
So when I'm talking about like AI literacy
means you can work from
basically first with the AI as an
assistant, like a tool,
not something that replacing you.
Some people has a misunderstanding,
like if I learn AI,
that may replace me.
No, that's not the fact.
The fact is AI literacy is like learning
how to harness the power of AI and
then use that ability.
So for example,
you will need to learn about how to
monitor your patients,
looking at the computer vision
outcomes you need to learn about like how
to prompt your the ai for like helping
with the documentation like helping like
we did with like writing down the progress
of your patient this is this is another
power other than that how to integrate
your workflow with the use of ai like
it's simply like it can replace when you
are prescribing hep by the printed
like a papers with just like a substituted
with the RTM that is like equipped with
the AI and monitor our patient just
looking at the biomechanical outcomes.
And that means like we should have it
as like a physical therapist,
enough literacy to look at the graphs and
conclude, make a conclusion out of that.
And also like a look at the progress
report of the patient and make a
conclusion out of that.
This is AI literacy and also integrated
with our life,
our progress and also our workflow,
knowing where is the best to use the
AI.
Also,
the last piece is we need to learn
how to educate our patients about the use
of technology, about the use of AI.
Not afraid of that,
being able to stand in front of the
cameras, knowing how to do that,
and that's all about literacy.
These are all pieces that are integrated
as a literacy.
And I think it should have been at
the school for these students,
not when they graduated.
So let's talk mindset.
You've said that the biggest barrier isn't
technology or regulation.
It's something emotional.
It's fear,
which is most of the time if you
boil things down,
that is the biggest barrier.
Why is fear holding us back in this
moment when to some of us like you,
it's very,
very clear the advantages outweigh the
fear?
So why is fear holding a lot of
people back?
Yeah.
let me give you a simple example when
google started or inner started to come to
our life a lot of like educators or
a lot of us like afraid of like
losing our jobs because or like some
teachers afraid of like if people are able
to search things like it on like
immediately so they're not going to learn
anything this is the same fear like they
think like ai is capable to do a
lot of tasks
but they're afraid that it can do their
job.
But actually, this is not true.
For a lot of jobs like PT,
like physical therapy,
we need to actually leave some of our
documentation, monitoring,
and also enhance our practice in the use
of AI.
When the clinician is absent,
what else should we do?
Obviously,
the technology is the substitute.
They can do it at home when we
are absent.
We cannot be present everywhere.
But some people are thinking about it as
like a replacement.
So that mindset should change.
We should embrace it,
but we should know like what type of
like how we should change our workflow,
how we should improve and enhance our
literacy,
knowing about like where exactly in the
software I should look up to infer the
progress of my patient.
This is something that is called literacy
and the mindset basically should change.
Understood.
Let's talk in a second about what you're
specifically creating.
You're not someone who's just thinking
about these things.
You're someone who's deeply involved in
executing on them.
So we'll get to that in one second.
I do want to say thanks to U.S.
Physical Therapy,
one of the largest PT organizations in the
country.
And they're talking to you if you're a
clinic owner.
If you've built something special,
but scaling that clinic and planning for
what's next can feel overwhelming.
US Physical Therapy can help you do that
without you ever losing control of the
thing that you've built.
Find out more now online at their website,
usph.com and click on partnerships.
Do also want to thank Brooks IHL,
that's Brooks Institute of Higher Learning
in Jacksonville,
residencies and post-professional
education in all of the subject matter
areas, orthopedics, pediatrics,
geriatrics,
and kind of everything in between.
Find out online if there's a path for
you to where you want to be in
your career at brooksihl.org.
That's brooksihl.org.
Now, Hoda, again,
I mentioned you're a creator.
So you're educating in the classroom.
You're sort of switching lanes a lot,
I would imagine.
But you're staying sort of in the same
domain.
And one of those things I mentioned in
the intro is you're a builder.
So what are you building?
What is it?
Who's it for?
And what does it do?
So I started with a group of friends
during the COVID time.
The company started a company called
HemScap and we built up the Pivotal PT
and it's all focused on the patient
monitoring, all pieces.
And we have a computer vision AI that
is for tracking the emotion.
We have also the documentation piece that
is basically doing like a progress note
and also soap notes all together.
And also like a full RTM.
So like a remote therapy,
like a virtual care messaging,
like all devices or collecting feedbacks,
all of the things that you can perfectly
first harness the AI into our benefits.
And second,
harness the power of technology
to help us grow.
And when I started in twenty one as
a part of my postdoc as a like
AI in rehab,
then I started to transfer the idea of
like, who's going to learn about that?
This is missing.
How they can learn about all these
complexities,
because this is complex thing.
This is not something that I learned in
the school to be more like a hands
on person.
rather than a tech person.
So no one in the PT school basically
teaches you how to read the biomechanical
outcomes.
Like it's sometimes really hard to like
look at the visual graphs and infer and
conclude out of those or even like a
real report and make a conclusion out of
this.
Someone should teach them and
This is something like ended up me into
in my faculty position,
start like educating my students both like
in two aspects.
So I started a simulation based teaching
of AI and patient monitoring in this
school.
And it was very successful.
And I'm going to present it in the
APTACSM.
This was something like a session of like
three hours that the students should learn
about the use of AI.
We use the pivotal PT and they have
to infer from computer vision,
AI outcomes,
and also the interaction with the patient,
how to like,
basically they can teach their patient to
use the technology when there is some
hesitation around the patient.
So that's what I thought the students in
the simulation based teaching of the AI in
the school.
The other thing that I did was moving
forward in integrated as a like assignment
based type of a project over one semester.
And I did two semesters with that.
And that was focusing on two things,
clinical reasoning
And also the application of AI.
This was something like when I was reading
this semester about the feedbacks of the
students,
they really liked it because they never
thought about like AI is not like
replacing them.
AI is something that can assist and
improve their clinical reasoning,
thinking about it.
And there's a lot of room to improve
it.
But basically, this is a good start.
This is something that they have to learn
at the school.
So I see like there's a kind of
like a change of the lane.
I did AI as a postdoc in my
project for the diabetes,
like monitoring for the exercise
monitoring, physical activity monitoring.
And then I started a company,
put together.
Now the company is very functional.
It's very much focused on the clinical
reason.
This is the goal.
And then now I'm on the education piece
of that.
And I think this is a journey that
I can complete with the collaboration with
some of the professors,
some of the faculties that are interested
to bring up that type of experience in
their school as well.
Where should someone go to find out more
information about what you've built and
are building?
So about the HempScap,
you can go to the HempScap.com or you
can search Pivotal PT and find a product.
And we're open to- What are they going
to find there?
They're going to find Pivotal PT,
which does what for who?
So it does a patient monitoring for the,
um, like for the physical therapist,
they can, they can message me there and,
um, they can ask to use it, um,
uh, for like, for the clinics.
This is something that they can find about
the company, but about the education,
they can,
they're feel free to go to the, uh,
San Homer university and find me like in
my bio over there.
And then they can,
Email me to my school email and then
we can start a collaboration like on the
educational piece.
So this is where like they can find
me both in the company website,
in the Hempstead website.
They can find more about like the
monitoring is not solely focused on
messaging, communication,
nor like a documentation.
Computer vision is a part of it.
Patient engagement is very important.
That's what I thought also,
like patient engagement,
adherence of the patient to their plan of
care.
This is something that should be monitored
in my educational.
And also they can email me and I
will be in touch with people in the
CSM also, APTS CSM,
about how we can collaborate.
This is something that I want to expand
it to the other schools and see like
what are the pitfalls of educating the,
like improving or enhancing the AI
literacy.
both in the simulation-based and also in
the school-based, like assignment-based.
Real quick, your presentation at CSM,
what's the title?
And then what will someone walk out of
your talk being able to do that they
couldn't do before going to your talk?
So after my talk,
they are going to gain an idea of
how successful is going to be
simulation-based teaching of AI for the
patient monitoring.
They can learn about even one session of
three hours can enhance the ability or the
literacy of the students about using AI
for patient monitoring.
What we like to learn is it can
to some extent contribute to their
clinical reasoning,
but basically clinical reasoning needs
some digestion in kind of like a one
semester of a project-based learning.
But simulation-based learning is something
that I'm going to talk about it,
the outcomes and how we implement it.
the use of AI and how it was
the interaction between a student and also
the patient during the simulation-based
teaching.
And they learned this is doable.
This is something that the minimum thing
they can do at the school for helping
the students embrace the AI as a tool
for one, improving their patient care,
secondly, for assisting them.
And also third,
this is something that is coming to our
life.
And we need to learn about it and
integrate it to the workflow.
This is part of us these days.
Got it.
You've said AI won't replace PTs.
I've heard people say this before.
It's not going to replace PTs.
But you say it will replace low value
care.
But what's that mean?
What's that look like in practice?
Help someone who doesn't understand what
that means get it.
So again, I should say that again,
AI won't,
will not replace physical therapists.
Never.
It doesn't have that capacity.
So I tried both computer vision,
generative AI.
It can help and assist us in some
aspects, but it's not replacing us.
Where it has the maximum kind of like
assistant is where we are absent,
which is when the patient is by himself
at home and doing their home exercises.
This is where we can use AI for
supervision,
basically like collecting information from
the patient performance, progress,
and then AI is able to
kind of narrow it down,
make it abstract report for us.
And then we can take a look at
the outcomes and get some idea about the
progress of a patient.
So rather than just simply like giving
them like a printed version of like
exercises,
Physical therapy service can enhance,
like a homework system can be designed by
the use of AI.
This is where the maximum level of
assistance by the AI.
This is where like we are absent and
we cannot be present there at all.
This is something that we will be always
absent.
The other piece is we have never
reimbursed for the help.
We have never get the benefit of
Right.
Home exercises.
So now there are some RTM codes,
especially in twenty six,
that people can get reimbursed for that
level of effort with the assistance of AI.
And that is like something that I was
like when I was practicing it,
that piece was always absent.
It was not worth for a lot of
us to
spend more time with the patient digging
into their home exercises because first of
all we were absent always we're not able
to monitor patients at home the second
piece was we're not able to get
reimbursement for that so those two were
barriers that we're not able like a
basically like a
focus on the home exercises very much or
patient monitoring very much but now this
is coming to our life this is something
that basically like encouraged in the that
rtm patient monitoring is something that
like a kind of like a um is
a new topic hybrid care is now something
is encouraged by the
uh cms and so this is something that
and that's a i mean the home exercise
is the lowest level of the care but
the maximum benefit of ai would be there
we can get the most level of the
assistance over there all right so again
we mentioned you're also in education you
do a lot of things soda but i'm
going to let you have a pen that
can rewrite all of physical therapy school
curriculum tomorrow
uh what's getting you don't have to worry
about removing because that is a problem
right we got to remove something we want
to add something but let's just say you
can add a class or two or some
elements what would you add for the
physical therapist or the physical
therapist assistant for the next year five
ten what needs to be put in there
starting tomorrow okay um
it's so what i do is i'm teaching
the advanced topics in my course in my
class and there is a like a project
that i integrated for improving the
clinical reasoning with the use of air
this is the minimum step that i was
able to take it but if i had
to change the whole curriculum i think the
ai can
integrate into the therapeutic exercises
to the physical therapy services.
And students should learn about all these
pieces of using AI in different classes.
So learn about how they can do the
hip with the use of AI.
This is part of the therapeutic exercise
class.
As a part of PT services,
we need to learn about how AI can
change the workflow from
only focus on the clinic-based to the
hybrid model,
and they can benefit from also the HEP,
like prescribing HEP.
This is something else that people can do.
The other piece is in the MSK courses,
they need to teach the students to look
at the outcomes generated by the progress
notes, documentation,
and also by the
uh computer vision and i look at the
biomechanical outcomes make them more like
a data driven rather than very much
observational it's a little bit of a shift
in how we do our courses but not
necessarily change the curriculum it's
more like making us like a try to
make people make the students more data
driven these days looking at the report
looking at the
looking at the outcome measures,
biomechanical measures, and then conclude.
So I think that's the whole thing.
It's going to be like several pieces that
can go into the curriculum,
but not really write it from the scratch.
The other thing is nowadays documentation
is now very much enhanced by the use
of like the saving time money for us
by the AI.
So that's another piece like students
should learn how they can,
even though they are learning probably
like in the first year, for example,
do the documentation from scratch,
but maybe later on they can learn how
to get the
advantages of the AI and learn how to
do the best documentation that has the
highest level of the compliance,
reflecting the progress of the patient in
like a later years.
Understood.
Hoda, we didn't prepare you this,
but it's time to do the parting shot.
Are you ready for the parting shot?
Okay.
Let's try it.
This is the parting shot.
One last mic drop moment.
No pressure.
Just your legacy on the line.
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So Hoda,
parting shot is just your last chance for
a mic drop moment.
What's the last idea,
the final thought or sentiment you'd want
to leave with the audience about
everything that you talked about today?
Okay, basically two things.
One is work on your AI literacy.
This should have started school.
This is something that simulation-based
practice and teaching is one way
doing the assignment based throughout the
semester is another way.
I'm sure there are other ways to enhance
the AI literacy.
The second thing is students should learn
about the hybrid care,
like remote and also in-person,
not solely focused on the virtual
meetings.
So this is not the case, basically.
So learning about how to do clinical
reasoning out of communications,
out of the AI outcomes,
out of the progress notes.
And this is something that should be
integrated together.
And patient monitoring is a big piece of
our practice.
that is can kind of like a guarantee
our success because we have a homework
system like if you leave the student by
themselves they may not get enough success
but if you then you had even we
had to start a homework system so we
had enough success this is the ai is
doing the same thing for us understood if
someone wanted to contact you what is the
single best way for someone to reach out
So email me at hsalsabili at
hymnscap.inc.com.
And that's the best way.
Perfect.
Hoda, thanks for doing what you do.
Thanks for trying to make this complicated
thing simple and making sure everybody can
keep up.
And hopefully in a year, three, five,
we see more programs putting the stress on
this AI literacy so we can empower our
clinicians and then empower our patients.
Perfect.
Thanks, Jimmy, for having me.
Appreciate it.
That's it for this one.
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And legally, none of this was advice.
It's for entertainment purposes only.
Bullshit!
See, Keith?
We read the script.
Happy now?