Physiotherapy education · palpation training
Train your hands on spines that behave like patients.
Spinalog is a physical simulator of the lumbar spine for practising palpation (unilateral and central PA) on realistic, varied conditions. Not just your lab partner’s back.
Built at the University of Melbourne: School of Computing and Information Systems × Dept. of Physiotherapy.
L2 – L5 · lumbar
The flagship device
Spinal Log, a lumbar spine you can actually feel.
The flagship Spinalog device is a physical simulator of the lumbar spine. Its tissue responds like the real thing, so hands learn what a vertebral level feels like under pressure, and rehearse the core mobilisations: central and unilateral postero-anterior (PA).
It’s the first of a growing family of spinal simulators.
- L2 – L5
- Central PA
- Unilateral PA
- Realistic tissue
One device. A closed learning loop.
The device is where it starts. Around it, a system closes the gap between rehearsing a technique and treating a person. The full loop is something you experience live.
- 01In your hands
Tactile device
Feel central and unilateral PA on a realistic lumbar spine. This is the part you take home.
- 02Revealed live
Feedback app
Every press becomes a force-versus-time curve, with sagittal and transverse views of the vertebrae.
- 03Revealed live
Mixed reality
Watch the bones move in real time, overlaid onto the device exactly where your hands are working.
- 04Revealed live
AI patient
Talk to a patient that answers back (voice, expression and clinical reasoning), running on-device, offline.
The app, the mixed reality and the AI patient are experienced live. Come to Innovation Week, or book a private demo.
Innovation Week · Melbourne Connect
Touch. Talk. Diagnose.
An AI patient for physiotherapy, live for one day only. Try the palpation devices with realistic tissue response, then meet a patient with conversational voice and expression, responding in real time.
Presented by the University of Melbourne: School of Computing and Information Systems & Department of Physiotherapy.
Counting down
- Date
- Monday 8 September 2026
- Time
- 9am – 4pm
- Venue
- The Superfloor Deck, Melbourne Connect
- Entry
- Free · registration required
Bring Spinalog to your program.
Whether you train students or treat patients, we build and adapt spinal simulators around the conditions that matter to you, with the feedback and AI-patient tools that close the loop.
Physiotherapy schools
Give every cohort hands-on exposure to the pathologies they'll actually treat: mapped to your curriculum, repeatable across an entire class, and consistent from one student to the next.
Clinics & centres
Keep clinical skills sharp and onboard new staff on standardised, repeatable cases, a shared reference for what a technique should feel like.
We’ll map Spinalog to your setting. No obligation.
The team
Made by researchers, tested with clinicians.
Spinalog began at the University of Melbourne, a collaboration between the School of Computing and Information Systems and the Department of Physiotherapy, engineering the device, the tools and the AI patient alongside the clinicians who teach the technique.