{"id":401320,"date":"2026-03-24T12:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T12:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/401320\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T12:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T12:22:14","slug":"an-ai-physiotherapist-helped-diagnose-a-rare-medical-emergency-and-saved-me-from-paralysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/401320\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018An AI physiotherapist helped diagnose a rare medical emergency and saved me from paralysis\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 47-year-old Cambridgeshire woman has described the \u201cunbearable pain\u201d she experienced \u2013 to the point she wished somebody would cut her \u201cleg off\u201d \u2013 before she got a rare diagnosis that affects up to three in 100,000 people via an AI physiotherapist.<\/p>\n

Amie Smith, a carer, said she first felt lower back pain on Sunday April 20, 2025 that she initially tried to manage with painkillers, but it progressed to \u201cexcruciatingly painful\u201d levels that travelled down her body and into her legs within days.<\/p>\n

The mother of three said she had an urgent GP appointment on Tuesday April 22 and was referred to an AI physiotherapist programme called Flok Health, which the NHS trust in her area was trialling.<\/p>\n

After a consultation with an AI-powered physiotherapist, Amie said she received a call on Monday April 28 from Kirsty Henderson, senior physiotherapist at Flok Health, who flagged that she might have a condition called cauda equina syndrome, which is compression of the spinal nerves at the tail end of the spinal cord that can cause paralysis and incontinence if left untreated, according to the NHS.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

The next day, Amie said she was rushed to hospital where she had an MRI and was diagnosed with the condition, prompting a five-hour emergency lumbar decompression surgery on May 1.<\/p>\n

Amie told PA Real Life: \u201cInitially, I thought (an AI physiotherapist) is not very personal. I felt like I was probably talking to a robot that couldn\u2019t really help me.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, actually, if it wasn\u2019t for that process, I wouldn\u2019t have gotten the help that I did, and ultimately I would have had a lot more damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of people in my generation and upwards that are very negative (about AI), but I\u2019m really quite thankful for it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

After a fibromyalgia diagnosis in 2018 \u2013 a chronic condition that causes pain all over the body \u2013 Amie said she has lived with pain ever since, but what she experienced in April 2025 felt \u201ccompletely different\u201d.<\/p>\n

Amie said: \u201cI\u2019ve always suffered with back pain, but this was excruciatingly painful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI left it for a few days thinking that if I just take pain relief and I carry on, I should be fine. But it just gradually got worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amie made a telephone appointment at her GP on Tuesday April 22, but she said the doctor \u201cautomatically\u201d wanted to \u201cblame\u201d her new pain on her fibromyalgia, despite Amie\u2019s insistence that it was \u201cdifferent\u201d and that she was really struggling to walk by that point.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Amie said she was signposted to the Flok Health app, which was deployed in February 2025 by Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust (CCS) as a way to help cut NHS back pain waiting lists.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t initially use Flok, because she didn\u2019t think it was \u201cvery personal\u201d, so when her pain worsened she opted instead to request an e-consult from her GP, which she didn\u2019t hear back from. Amie said she submitted another one the next day and when she didn\u2019t get a response from that one too, she decided to give Flok a go on Friday April 25.<\/p>\n

According to Flok Health, patients receive an invitation to complete an automated video call assessment and during this consultation an AI-powered physiotherapist will evaluate their symptoms to determine the right treatment.<\/p>\n

It was during this consultation that Amie said the AI physiotherapist flagged her symptoms and lack of movement as serious, so encouraged her to go to A&E, where she was prescribed muscle relaxants and was sent home.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

By Monday April 28, Amie said she was \u201cbeside\u201d herself in pain and she hadn\u2019t heard anything back from her e-consult requests, but then her phone rang around 5pm. She said she was \u201cpleasantly surprised\u201d to receive an hour-long telehealth appointment with Kirsty Henderson from Flok, calling to see how she had got on at the hospital.<\/p>\n

Amie said: \u201cI described everything to her and I just felt like she was able to do what nobody else had: Give me time to tell exactly how this is affecting me and what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cStraight away, she said that I definitely needed an MRI.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe explained to me that it could be something called cauda equina, and that getting help urgently is essential because the longer it goes on, the more damage that can be done.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the first time out of all the people I spoke to that anybody actually told me that I was at risk,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

After getting the confidence from Kirsty to advocate for herself, Amie said she called her GP the next morning, but didn\u2019t get anywhere with that. So a friend of Amie\u2019s took her back to A&E, where she said doctors could see she was \u201cextremely upset\u201d so they took her blood pressure and it was \u201creally high\u201d.<\/p>\n

Amie said she was taken \u201cstraight through\u201d to being admitted and saw a doctor who did some initial tests and immediately sent her for an MRI scan. Within hours, Amie said an orthopaedic doctor described it as a \u201creally bad situation\u201d where her discs had slipped and they were trapping the nerves \u2013 something she later discovered in her GP\u2019s notes as cauda equina syndrome.<\/p>\n

Half an hour later, Amie said she was in the back of an ambulance being transferred to a nearby specialist hospital, where she spent a couple of days, until she told a doctor that the back of her leg was numb so she was rushed into a five-hour lumbar decompression surgery on May 1.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Since the surgery, Amie said her pain has subsided but she has had to make some \u201cadaptations\u201d because she still doesn\u2019t have full use of her left leg, like driving her son\u2019s automatic car instead of her manual one. She said she also struggles to walk for too long.<\/p>\n

Mike Passfield, the deputy director from Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS trust, told PA Real Life: \u201cThe new AI-assisted approach is having a significant impact in our region, enabling thousands of patients to get faster access to expert physiotherapy support.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only is the technology capable of treating and discharging patients at scale, but its red flag system means patients with more serious or extremely rare conditions are identified and directed to the right human-led service quickly to get the appropriate care.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring a pilot of Flok Health in Cambridgeshire last year, we cut waiting lists by more than half. Thousands more people are getting immediate access to support thanks to the new approach, transforming the way we deliver physiotherapy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

After everything settled down, Amie said: \u201cI went back to Kirsty to really thank her because I honestly felt like she was the only person that actually listened.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe realised the red flags, talked me through it, explained the risks and what she was concerned about, and even gave me advice on how to try to get the doctors to help me.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I can see that every 24 hours that was going by, more damage was being done to my body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat damage is still here today to a point, but had I not spoken to Kirsty and then gone on to follow what I\u2019ve been told to do, I probably would have been unable to walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I owe a lot to Kirsty. She made a huge difference,\u201d Amie said, still surprised by how it all \u201cstarted\u201d with an AI physio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 47-year-old Cambridgeshire woman has described the \u201cunbearable pain\u201d she experienced \u2013 to the point she wished somebody…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[78],"tags":[289,92328,182071,182072,18,6628,182073,135,19,17,1565,11571,9097],"class_list":["post-401320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cambridgeshire","tag-cambridgeshire-community-services-nhs-trust","tag-cauda-equina-syndrome","tag-eire","tag-fibromyalgia","tag-flok-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nhs","tag-physiotherapy","tag-surgery"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116284132565967521","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}