Heidi Team
"Our business model is to see as many people as possible in 30-minute slots with no breaks in between, and you can't do that without Heidi." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
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PHYX set out to do something that doesn't usually happen in physiotherapy: charge less and take less time, without cutting into the quality of care. A session at PHYX runs shorter, and costs less, than what most private clinics in Hong Kong charge for a longer one. The only way to make that work is if a physiotherapist's time in the room goes entirely to the client, not to notes.
Sebastian Swarbreck, PHYX's CEO, spent seven years in the physiotherapy industry before founding the practice, and knew that keeping sessions this short and this affordable would be impossible if physiotherapists were writing notes by hand. Heidi has been part of PHYX since its first day of business, and it's since become how every physiotherapist on PHYX's clinical team works, including founding physiotherapist Zoe Lee.
Every PHYX appointment runs 30 minutes, back-to-back, with physiotherapists seeing well over a dozen clients some days. Documentation at that pace, without a tool built for it, would mean something has to give: either the detail in the notes, or the attention a physio can give the person on the table. Zoe had already lived through that tradeoff before she joined PHYX. Sebastian had to solve it before PHYX could open at all.
Before joining PHYX, Zoe worked in a hospital, then a private clinic, and neither gave her a real way to document a session.
"A lot of exercises were quite simply termed. If we did squats, lunges and some bike work, we'd just sum it up as 'lower leg exercise.” — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
In a hospital seeing too many patients to write anything in full, Zoe's notes existed to jog her own memory, not to capture what actually happened in the session. That habit followed her to her next clinic, where there was no template to replace it with.
"That private clinic didn't have a formal note-taking template. I had to type everything myself, and it can get quite messy. — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
Across both, documentation depended entirely on her own memory and shorthand from one session to the next, and detail was the first thing to go when the day got busy.
Sebastian designed PHYX's schedule with no gaps between clients and nothing held back for admin. Traditional note-taking, which needs a gap somewhere to write things up, was never going to fit.
"Because I started PHYX with Heidi, I knew we couldn't start the way we run PHYX with a traditional type of note-taking. You couldn't do it with handwritten notes, or typing while the client was there. Our appointments are all 30 minutes. Without Heidi, I think we would have struggled to start the company." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
In a hospital seeing too many patients to write anything in full, Zoe's notes existed to jog her own memory, not to capture what actually happened in the session. That habit followed her to her next clinic, where there was no template to replace it with.
"That private clinic didn't have a formal note-taking template. I had to type everything myself, and it can get quite messy." — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
Across both, documentation depended entirely on her own memory and shorthand from one session to the next, and detail was the first thing to go when the day got busy.
Sebastian isn't a physiotherapist himself, and his first instinct was that any transcription tool would be able to handle PHYX's notes.
"I'm not a physiotherapist, so I assumed any note-taking app would do." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
That assumption didn't survive a conversation with Christie Mak, PHYX's co-founder and Clinical Director, who ruled out anything without medical-specific documentation built in.
Heidi's ability to turn a spoken session into structured SOAP notes automatically, rather than just transcribing it, was what changed Sebastian's mind.
"The medical side of it was what convinced me. There are plenty of note-taking apps out there, but Heidi could actually turn a conversation into SOAP notes automatically. When I showed it to my business partner, Christie, she said, 'No, this is the only one we can use, because of the medical side of it." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
Before opening, Sebastian researched other clinics running on Heidi, including one in the UK, to confirm the same setup would hold at PHYX's pace.
PHYX built its own standardised template for the whole clinical team, internally called "PHYX notes."
At the end of a session, Zoe asks Heidi for a home exercise list for her client, and it comes back ready to send.
"It gives me a perfect set of messages I can send straight to my client, even small details like, 'have fun in Bali, stay safe,' things I'd normally miss typing out myself." — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
Christie uses the same session output for different downstream documents. Referral letters to other clinicians and insurance summaries both draw on details already captured in the session, things like injury history, findings, and treatment given, rather than needing to be written up separately from scratch.It gives me a perfect set of messages I can send straight to my client, even small details like, 'have fun in Bali, stay safe,' things I'd normally miss typing out myself."
A session in Hong Kong rarely stays in one language. Clients move between Cantonese, English and Mandarin within the same conversation, sometimes within the same sentence, and Zoe's sessions are no exception. She has multilingual transcription set up in Heidi so a session doesn't need to be forced into one language to be documented properly.
"We treat a lot of multilingual clients, and that's very useful." — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
"I'd say Heidi gives me back two to three hours a day, especially now that I also send an exercise list to every client." — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
That number holds up even on Zoe's busiest days, not just her typical ones.
"On some days, Zoe might see 15 clients with just one half-hour break for lunch, and every single one of those clients has their notes taken through Heidi. She once uploaded a full day's worth two days later, while on holiday." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
The thing Zoe lost to shorthand and typing at her old clinics is the thing she got back first.
"We're able to actually give eye contact to patients while they talk about the problem, which is very important, because it shows that we care." — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
It also means nothing said in the room gets lost. If Zoe misses something in the moment, a full recording of the session is still there to check.
"Heidi is able to record every single word during the conversation. It lets us go back to the transcript, or the detailed version of the note, to see what we missed." — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
None of that is possible if physiotherapists' evenings are spent catching up on notes instead. The team that trains for Hyrox together, plays football, spins, and travels is only able to do that consistently because documentation doesn't follow them home.
"Running is a big part of our social activities, along with generally being active. They all seem to love Hyrox, they all seem to love going to the gym, and they all love travel." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
Zoe puts it more simply.
"I cannot live without Heidi." — Zoe Lee, Physiotherapist at PHYX
For Sebastian, the stakes are less personal and more existential for the business. Notes that fall behind aren't just an admin backlog, they're a compliance risk that could cost a physiotherapist their licence, which is why having every session captured the moment it ends matters, even before it's synced to PHYX's practice management software.
"From my point of view as the CEO, it makes my life easier because even if their notes are not uploaded and pushed to our practice management software, I know that they're there on Heidi." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
That same logic runs through how the whole practice is booked, not just so nothing falls through the cracks, but because the business model depends on it.
PHYX is opening its second site in Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) soon, its first expansion beyond the original clinic. Sebastian expects most clients there to speak Cantonese, and Heidi's multilingual support, the same setup Zoe already relies on in her own sessions, carries straight over to the new site.
"Heidi is essential to what we do, so we're more than happy to help wherever we can. We're really happy to be part of the journey." — Sebastian Swarbreck, CEO of PHYX
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