Meet Advances: a physiotherapy research feed

Advances is a live physiotherapy research feed inside the PhysioAI app. It brings new papers from several scholarly databases into one place, lets you filter by specialty and evidence type, and hands any paper to Synergist to explain what it means for practice.

Key takeaways

• Advances pulls physiotherapy research from OpenAlex, Europe PMC, PubMed, Semantic Scholar and Crossref into one feed.
• Choose a focus: Recent plus 12 specialties, from MSK and Neuro to Oncology. You can switch anytime.
• A NEW badge marks papers from the last three days, and every card shows read time and evidence type.
• Filter by date, evidence type, open access and source. Newer does not mean better.
• One tap sends a paper to Synergist, which explains what it means for physiotherapy practice.

Why a dedicated research feed

Staying current with physiotherapy research is hard. Papers are spread across many databases and journals, most search tools are not built for physios, and it is easy to spend an hour searching before you read anything useful.

Advances is designed to make that a short daily habit. It is found in the Advances tab of the PhysioAI app, on Android, iOS and the web.

One feed, many sources

Advances brings together physiotherapy research from OpenAlex, Europe PMC, PubMed, Semantic Scholar and Crossref. Newest arrivals appear first.

You can search instantly across titles, abstracts, journals, keywords and authors. When the library is thin on a topic, one tap searches the live databases. Results are merged and de-duplicated, and every live result is added to the library for the next reader.

Choose your research focus

Before you read, you can shape the feed around what you care about. Pick Recent or one of 12 specialties: MSK, Neuro, Sports, Cardio, Pulmonary, Pediatric, Geriatric, Women's, Pain, Oncology, Tech and Research. Start with one and switch anytime from the feed.

Stay current in a few minutes a day

Each card is built for quick scanning. A NEW badge marks anything that arrived in the last three days, so you can see what has changed since you last checked. Every card also shows the read time and the type of evidence, so you know what you are opening before you tap.

Refine the evidence

Not every paper carries the same weight. Advances lets you filter by:

• Published date, from the last 30 days to the last 2 years
• Evidence type, such as systematic review, meta-analysis, randomised controlled trial, guideline or cohort study
• Open access only, when you want the full text
• Source, to see papers from a particular database

A useful principle when reading research: recent is not the same as better. A new single study does not outweigh a well-conducted systematic review or guideline. Filtering by evidence type helps you put a paper in context before you change your practice because of it.

Skim the abstract, then read the original

When you open a paper, the abstract is split into structured sections (Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions), so you can see quickly what was studied and what was found. A short AI summary grounded in the abstract helps you orient yourself, and every paper shows its provenance: the source, and a DOI or PMID.

From there you can save the paper to a private reading list, open the original publication, or analyse it with Synergist. Open-access papers can be read in full in the app.

Discovery in Advances, understanding in Synergist

Finding a paper is only the first step. Understanding what it means for your patients is the harder part.

With one tap, "Analyse with Synergist" hands the paper to PhysioAI's AI tutor. Synergist explains what the study means for physiotherapy practice, including its design, outcome measures and limitations. It is a learning aid, so always check important points against the original paper.

Free and paid access

Advances and library search are available to everyone. On the free plan you see recent papers plus one specialty, use one filter at a time, save up to three papers and see preview summaries. The paid plan unlocks all 12 specialties, combined filters, unlimited saved papers, full AI summaries, live database search and Analyse with Synergist.

How to try Advances in PhysioAI

Open the PhysioAI app or app.physioai.in and go to the Advances tab. If you want to go further than browsing, Review of Literature sits at the top of the same tab: type a question and PhysioAI screens papers from five databases and writes a cited report. Learn more on the PhysioAI research page.