Patients Kept Quitting Physio Midway. So Two Bhopal Doctors Built AI Devices That Send the Clinic Home

During a video call, a physiotherapist closely watches as a family member helps a patient perform an exercise. A small device connected to a tablet hums softly. Hundreds of kilometres away, the therapist adjusts the treatment settings in real time. 

What looks like a simple virtual consultation is, in fact, something much bigger: a rehabilitation session delivered at home without the need for an in-person physiotherapist visit, with clinic-grade physiotherapy enabled through connected devices and remote monitoring. 

For millions of Indians recovering from paralysis, neurological disorders, injuries and surgeries, physiotherapy is not a one-time treatment. It often requires months, sometimes years, of consistent care. 

Yet for many families, especially those in smaller towns and rural areas, regular visits to a physiotherapy clinic are simply not possible.

This gap is what inspired Remote Physios, a health-tech startup founded by physiotherapists Dr Anant Singh Gaur and Dr Anubha Singhai, to build an AI- and IoT-powered rehabilitation platform that brings professional physiotherapy beyond clinic walls.

The child who sparked a bigger question

For Anant Singh Gaur and Dr Anubha Singhai, Remote Physios wasn’t born in a boardroom. It emerged from nearly two decades spent working closely with patients and witnessing the same challenge unfold again and again.

The couple, who met during their physiotherapy studies and have been together since their undergraduate days, completed their postgraduate physiotherapy studies in 2008 and went on to build successful clinical careers. 

Anant specialised in neurology, while Anubha focused on clinical practice and patient care.

Over the years, they treated hundreds of patients recovering from paralysis, neurological conditions, injuries, and chronic pain. Yet, despite their best efforts, one thing continued to bother them.

“We always identified this gap,” says Anubha. “Patients were not able to complete the number of sessions required for better recovery.”

The issue wasn’t a lack of motivation. For many families, daily travel to clinics was expensive, time-consuming, and often impossible. Once the immediate pain subsided, physiotherapy would slowly slip down the priority list, leaving recovery incomplete.

The couple tried different approaches — opening clinics, experimenting with home-care models, and conducting teleconsultations. 

But every solution seemed to hit the same wall: how could patients continue receiving quality physiotherapy without having to travel every day?

That question stayed with them for years before eventually becoming the foundation of Remote Physios.

One of the stories that stayed with Anant involved a four-and-a-half-year-old boy from Nasrullaganj, around 100 kilometres from Bhopal.

The child had developed Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), a rare autoimmune disorder that left both his arms and legs paralysed. His family were farmers, and daily travel to Bhopal for rehabilitation was nearly impossible.

“We started training family members and helping this patient on video calls,” recalls Anant.

For a year, the family followed guided physiotherapy sessions remotely. Today, the child attends school and leads a much more independent life.

The case reinforced something Anant and Anubha had witnessed repeatedly during their 17 years as physiotherapists: patients rarely stop treatment because they don’t need it. They stop because continuing it becomes too difficult.

Why physiotherapy often stops midway

India’s physiotherapy ecosystem largely revolves around clinics and home visits. While this works well during the initial stages of recovery, long-term rehabilitation remains a challenge.

Patients recovering from paralysis, spinal cord injuries, neurological conditions, arthritis, or post-surgical complications often need supervised exercises for months. Yet travel costs, time constraints, caregiver responsibilities, and geographical barriers frequently interrupt treatment.

“As long as symptoms like pain are present, patients prioritise treatment,” says Anubha. “But once the symptoms reduce, many are unable to continue the sessions required for complete recovery.”

The problem is particularly severe in Tier-II and Tier-III cities and rural India, where access to trained physiotherapists remains limited.

Over the years, the founders experimented with different models, including clinics, home care services, and teleconsultations. But one problem remained unsolved: how do you deliver actual physiotherapy equipment remotely?

That question eventually led to the birth of Remote Physios.

From physiotherapy practice to health-tech innovation

The idea was formally conceptualised in 2023.

By then, the founders had already managed nearly 1,000 patients through tele-physiotherapy consultations. While video calls helped, they constantly encountered a limitation.

“Whenever devices were required, we got stuck,” says Anant. “If someone needed muscle stimulation or pain modulation, we still had to call them to the clinic.”

The solution was to recreate the physiotherapy clinic at home, allowing patients to continue rehabilitation without requiring a physiotherapist to be physically present for every session. 

Remote Physios developed a suite of IoT-enabled devices that physiotherapists can control remotely while monitoring patients through video consultations.

Their ecosystem includes:

• AxonEase for neural stimulation and pain management

• MyoElevate for muscle stimulation and strengthening

• TissueWave for therapeutic ultrasound

• Pelvistrength for pelvic floor and core rehabilitation

• PhysioEMG for muscle activity assessment and biofeedback

“These are the same devices used in physiotherapy clinics,” explains Anant. “The difference is that a physiotherapist sitting hundreds of kilometres away can control them.”

The startup also uses AI-powered clinical decision support tools that help physiotherapists design more personalised treatment plans while reducing the chances of human oversight.

At the patient end, exercises are converted into interactive augmented reality games. Instead of repeatedly performing monotonous movements, patients engage in activities that feel more like play.

“We are preparing over 150 rehabilitation games so that exercises become interesting and measurable,” says Anant.

Building technology as healthcare professionals

Creating sophisticated healthcare technology was not easy for two clinicians.

“We are hardcore medicos,” Anant says with a laugh. “Technology was one of our biggest challenges.”

Initially, the team experimented using commercially available physiotherapy devices fitted with simple control mechanisms. Early prototypes were outsourced while the founders focused on validating the model.

The turning point came after winning the Himalayan Startup Trek in late 2024, followed by the NIDHI PRAYAS grant in 2025.

The support enabled them to build advanced prototypes, expand their team, and develop in-house engineering capabilities.

Today, Remote Physios has a team of around 20 members, including physiotherapists, IoT engineers, AI specialists, and software developers.

Patient feedback has played a major role in shaping the platform.

“Software must have been rebuilt four or five times,” says Anant. “Whenever we saw users facing difficulties or too many clicks, we redesigned it.”

Safety features such as emergency stop buttons were added based on caregiver feedback, while interfaces were simplified to ensure elderly patients and non-technical users could operate the system comfortably.

When healing finds its way home

For Anant and Anubha, some of the most meaningful lessons have come not from laboratories or prototypes, but from living rooms, village homes, and conversations with patients trying to balance recovery with everyday life.

One such patient was a corporate professional struggling with tennis elbow. Every time he called, he would promise to visit the clinic the following week. Work deadlines, long commutes, and daily responsibilities always got in the way.

The pain lingered for months.

“It sounds like a small problem,” says Anant, “but if left untreated for a long time, it can become chronic and much harder to manage.”

Instead of asking him to rearrange his life around treatment, the team sent a therapeutic ultrasound device to his home and scheduled short sessions before his workday began. For the patient, the difference was not just the treatment itself, but the fact that recovery finally became practical.

Anubha remembers another elderly woman whose children lived in the United States. Like many older adults, she needed consistent physiotherapy but found it difficult to maintain regular sessions.

“Slowly, she could see her own progress,” says Anubha. “That continuity made a huge difference.”

Stories like these have reinforced a simple truth for the founders: recovery often doesn’t fail because treatment is ineffective. It fails because life gets in the way. Work schedules, distance, finances, caregiving responsibilities, and everyday commitments make it difficult for people to keep showing up.

The challenge, they realised, was not just delivering physiotherapy — it was helping people stay connected to it.

Building through doubt, debt and determination

The journey from idea to implementation was far from straightforward.

In the early days, the founders funded much of the development themselves, testing concepts with patients and refining prototypes long before external support arrived.

At one point, the pressure became significant.

“In November 2025, we had nearly Rs 45 lakh in personal loans,” recalls Anant. “There were moments when things felt uncertain, but we believed the problem was worth solving.”

The couple continued pitching relentlessly, presenting their idea at more than a hundred forums, incubators, and startup programmes.

Their persistence gradually began to pay off.

Remote Physios went on to win the Himalayan Startup Trek, secure the NIDHI PRAYAS grant, and receive support from organisations such as IIT Mandi Catalyst, T-Hub, IIT Indore, MeitY Genesis, and the Aditya Birla Foundation.

Today, the startup has worked with more than 250 patients, filed multiple patents and trademarks, and built a growing ecosystem of physiotherapists, engineers, and technology experts.

For the founders, however, these milestones are less important than what they represent.

“Funding and recognition are important,” says Anant. “But what matters most is that they allow us to keep building and reach more people who need rehabilitation support.”

After all, the goal was never simply to create another healthcare startup. It was to ensure that a patient’s recovery journey doesn’t end prematurely because help is too far away.

Why rehabilitation cannot be an afterthought

For Anant and Anubha, Remote Physios is not simply a technology company.

It is an attempt to address one of healthcare’s most overlooked problems: continuity of care.

“We want to enter public health,” says Anant. “That is why we have deliberately kept the cost of devices affordable.”

Each device is priced at around Rs 15,000, significantly lower than many specialised rehabilitation technologies. In comparison, a single home physiotherapy session in India can cost anywhere between Rs 700 and Rs 2,000, depending on the city and condition being treated. 

Since rehabilitation often requires dozens of sessions over several months, the cumulative cost can run into tens of thousands of rupees, making a one-time device investment a potentially more affordable option for long-term continuity of care. 

His motivation comes from years of seeing families struggle after life-changing diagnoses.

“If someone has paralysis at home, families often spend huge amounts on treatment because they don’t realise that proper exercises, activities and continuity of care play the biggest role in recovery,” he says.

India is witnessing a growing burden of non-communicable diseases, neurological disorders, stroke-related disabilities and chronic conditions that require long-term rehabilitation.

For many patients, the challenge isn’t finding treatment. It’s staying connected to it.

The founders believe technology can bridge that gap.

By combining physiotherapists, connected devices, AI-assisted decision-making and family involvement, they hope to make quality rehabilitation available regardless of geography.

“We want physiotherapy to reach the last person in the community,” says Anant. “If continuity of care can be maintained, recovery becomes possible for so many more people.”

And perhaps that future begins with a simple scene already unfolding in homes today: a family member helping a loved one exercise, a physiotherapist guiding them through a screen, and technology quietly ensuring that recovery doesn’t stop at the clinic door.

All images courtesy Anant Singh

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