The Norwegian Physiotherapy Association is now developing its own principles for artificial intelligence in physiotherapy. One of them deals with something that sounds obvious – but which in practice determines whether an AI tool actually works in your clinic.

You have just finished a consultation with a patient who has chronic shoulder pain. The medical history was extensive, the examination yielded many findings, and your assessment points to a further treatment course requiring good documentation. You know what needs to be in the note – it's just that the note hasn't been written yet. The next patient arrives in seven minutes.

This is the everyday reality that the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) and the professional community around physiotherapy are now discussing when building professional principles for AI in clinical practice. The discussion isn't about whether technology should be part of the physiotherapist's daily life – it's already there. It's about who should set the terms.

NFF's Principle Work: Three Professional Building Blocks

The Norwegian Physiotherapist Association is now adapting principles from the British Physiotherapist Association, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, to Norwegian conditions, and highlights three points:

Freedom of choice and consent. The patient shall be able to choose human contact over AI, and shall give informed consent for technology to be used and for data to be shared.

Professional liability. The physiotherapist has clinical responsibility – even when AI is part of the workflow. This involves understanding the technology, assessing risks, and ensuring professionally sound practice.

Competence and ethics. The use of AI must be within the professional field you have expertise in, and be subject to the same laws and ethical principles as other patient care.

In an article in Fysioterapeuten in May 2026, manual therapist Preeti Agarwal formulates it in the same precise way: «Digital tools can improve quality – but never replace professional responsibility.» The tool can structure, formulate, and support – but you must always quality-assure the content.

Why the third principle is the hardest

The first two principles are easier to translate into practice: inform the patient, obtain consent, retain responsibility for the final note. The third—that the tool must work within your field of practice – is more difficult because physiotherapy is not one thing.

The NFF has 14 specialties in its specialist training program. One manual therapist needs a journal structure that accommodates patient history with red flags, clinical examination with specific tests, assessment of imaging, and functional assessment for sick leave. psychomotor physiotherapist need space to breathe, body awareness, and the relational. A Sports Physiotherapist shall document movement analysis, sport-specific testing, and return-to-play criteria. Pediatric physiotherapist needs a development perspective, parent-teacher conferences, and collaboration with the school and health clinic.

It's not fourteen variants of the same template. It's fourteen different ways of thinking clinically, inserted into fourteen different note structures. An AI tool that delivers one fixed note format – no matter how professional it sounds – forces the subject into a box it doesn't fit.

We have previously written about how Hands do not document for physiotherapists, and why it is a structural challenge – not a personal weakness. The same structural dynamics apply here: when the tool does not meet the profession where it actually is, the result is either a reduced journal or a lot of follow-up work. Both undermine professional responsibility.

When the template follows the subject – not the other way around

The professional solution is simple to formulate and demanding to build: the journal template must be shapeable by the person who actually uses it.

In Medivox, you create your own templates. You decide which fields the note will have, in what order, and with what terminology. A manual therapist builds a template with space for referral justification and sick leave. A psychomotor physical therapist builds a template with space for relational observations. An sports physical therapist builds a template with space for test results and load phasing. Templates can be shared within the clinic, adjusted based on experience, and further developed as your practice changes.

When you then let Medivox listen to the consultation, the draft is filled in according to your template – not according to a vendor standard. You own the structure. The tool helps you with transcription, organization, and the first draft, but it is your clinical judgment that determines what remains.

It's like that too Norwegian Directorate of Health's AI Code of Conduct and Information security standards is meant to work in practice: not by the clinician adapting to the tool, but by the tool adapting to the clinician's expertise. The patient's name is pseudonymized before the transcription is further processed, all data processing happens in Norwegian data centers, and all choices regarding template, structure, and terminology are made by you.

What other professions can learn from physiotherapy

The great thing about the NFF's approach is that it's not physiotherapy-specific. The three principles – consent, professional responsibility, and adaptation to the profession – can be transferred directly to psychologists, midwives, opticians, dentists, and nurses. The professions are different, but the need is the same: the tools incorporated into consultations must be moldable by the profession they are intended to serve.

This movement is the main professional story in the Norwegian healthcare sector in the spring of 2026: the professional associations are taking ownership of how AI will be integrated. NFF's principle work is perhaps the clearest example, but the logic is transferable.

For you as a physiotherapist, this means you don't have to choose between «AI that is easy to use» and «AI that suits my profession.» It's entirely possible to have both – as long as the template is yours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to inform the patient that I am using speech-to-text during the consultation?
Yes. The patient must be informed and give consent before the conversation is transcribed. This is part of good clinical practice, a professional principle from NFF [Norwegian Physiotherapist Association], and a requirement under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The consent should be documented in the patient's record.

Can I use AI journaling for all 14 physical therapy specialties?
It depends on whether the tool allows you to build templates based on your specialty. In Medivox, you create templates yourself – you can have one for manual therapy, one for psychomotor physiotherapy, one for sports physiotherapy, and switch between them depending on the patient you have.

Who has professional responsibility for what ends up in the patient record when AI is involved?
The NFF's principles are clear: the physical therapist has clinical responsibility even when AI is used. An AI draft is just a draft – it is your assessment that makes it a record.

What do I need to check before using an AI tool in the clinic?
NFF recommends checking that the software complies with Information Security and Privacy Standards, that the patient consents, that you can quality assure the content, and that the tool is suitable for your professional field. NFF's advice before you start using the tools Here's a good checklist.

Can a tool I build myself be used for both Bokmål and Nynorsk?
Yes. Your own template allows you to control language and terminology according to the clinic's and patient's needs. That is part of the point of building the template yourself.

Use Medivox for free – Get started completely free

Would you like to see how a template can be built for your specific field? Contact us – We will show you how the template builder works for your physiotherapy specialty.

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