Today, Fitmust is one of Ashva’s best and most efficient products, taking affordable and quantitative physiotherapy to the next level. However, the road to its development was just like any other – slow, uneasy and frustrating. For a company focusing on making physiotherapy data-driven, we were borderline exhausted by how fruitless our research was turning out to be at the very beginning. It began with the very first prototype of Fitknees and the assessment of Surface EMG technology, which is presently used for neural health testing. But after multiple experiments using data analysis, various mathematical models, and machine learning, we soon found it to be inaccurate when it came to obtaining muscle strength in musculoskeletal patients. That was our first …

Does your knee pain dictate your heart and soul at times? Does your knee look and feel terrifying just like this? If so, then your knee urgently needs to be examined by a professional. Essentially, a perfect knee examination doesn’t exist, or does it? Come on, let’s be realistic, no, it doesn’t. But what we can do, is bring it pretty damn close. What does a knee examination require? For starters, it requires a keen sense of observation and sensitive palpation skills to identify the problem, or specifically, what is causing the patient discomfort. In cases such as post-operative knee stiffness, or muscular imbalances in the knee, one such aspect of knee examination is considerably important, and that is Movement …

Assessment is a delicate step-by-step process to interview and examine a patient to come to a provisional diagnosis. To put it simply, assessment is the foundation of a therapist’s treatment and clinical decision-making. The process of assessment begins with a polite self-introduction followed by an open-ended question such as What seems to be the problem? or What brings you to the hospital/clinic today? This is known as a patient interview. After carefully listening to their problem, a clinician moves on to the next steps of assessment which are – 1. Collection of patient’s history of past and present illness 2. Observation of their body 3. Examination After the entire process, the therapist comes up with a list of problems the …

“Your recovery is going well. Your knee should be normal by another two weeks.” “According to our Short Form-36 report, your recovery score is at 75*, which means we can expect your knee to be normal by the end of another two weeks.” Imagine you’re the patient and you hear your physio say either of these two sentences. Which one would you prefer to listen to? Which one is more assuring and seemingly trustworthy? Most people would choose the second one. The difference? Data and metrics served as evidence of progress. A crucial part of treatment and recovery includes its quantification. As much as the above example helps us understand its importance for patients, it is even more important for …

One of the most widely used methods of assessing muscle strength is Manual Muscle Testing, which gives a physiotherapist a general understanding of how weak a patient’s muscle is. But what it fails to do, is to provide a clinician with a numeric quantification with which the muscle thrusts. Although being a standard clinical evaluation tool, its reliability and validity are highly questionable. The limitations of MMT arise from the nature of the procedure used as the tester must provide external resistance, which may vary considerably between testers. MMT also comes with a complicated procedure and it takes an experienced clinician to correctly assign the exact grade to a muscle. This method of assessment also annihilates the possibility of measuring …

Today if you tune into any news channels, you’ll see people debating (even shouting) about how the Indian economy is growing too slowly, what steps the government should take, and why there’s a need to bring reforms – the list is neverending. While there’s a genuine need to discuss such issues, every single media agency missed out on one silent parasite affecting the Indian economy – physical disability. With around 15 crore Indians suffering from knee pain alone, incidents of knee arthritis are about 15 times higher than in most Western nations. Even though India’s disability frequency is lower than western nations (2% vs 15%), the probable inaccuracy and the sheer size of our population make it far more challenging …

There has never been a shortage in the number of attractive statistics supporting any type of surgery. Why would ailments related to your knee be any different? Individuals suffering from knee pain often consult an orthopedic doctor who then usually takes them in for either an X-ray investigation or an MRI, depending on the patient’s history of course. The reports generally reveal degenerative changes or ligament tears. The obvious prescription for this – Knee Surgery. Little do people know that surgery for most of these cases is very much avoidable. “Knee surgeries are 95% successful,” articles say, but what is success in terms of healthcare? Is it a Reduction of pain? Reduction of discomfort? Is it to improve one’s quality …

It is well-known that the field of physiotherapy, like many other forms of healthcare, is not immune to poor patient adherence. Although the extent of non-adherence isn’t quantified well enough, the problem is fairly recognized and understood. Patient adherence reports are limited to the early 1950s and late 1990s, making them outdated and not statistically accurate or consistent with the current decade or population. Why is patient adherence to physiotherapy important in the first place? As a clinician, is it necessary to understand the extent of adherence your patient has to his home exercise program? To put things simply, it is very important for therapists to understand the extent of an individual’s loyalty to his exercise for a variety of …

“Oh, I can’t take it anymore!”, “This pain is tearing me apart!” , “Please help me feel better doctor.” These are just a few of the lines that physiotherapists have to listen to on a daily basis. Looking at this, you would imagine that a patient would follow anything that a doctor prescribes them to do right? If only that were true. Studies suggest that roughly 80% of patients don’t follow up on a doctor’s consultation after the first sitting. Even among those who do, the dropout rate mid-treatment is a staggering ~74%. About 14% even miss showing up for their very first appointment. Patients’ adherence to physiotherapeutic treatment is as indispensable as a therapist’s expert diagnosis. While there are …