A physio who summited Everest on building the Surrey Physio Group: buying your own premises, building your own software, and where AI actually helps a clinic.
Tim Allardyce never dreamed of climbing Everest — a chance meeting with a Sherpa on a Scottish island planted the seed, and 18 months of altitude chambers, daily ice baths and 2,200 kilometres of running later, he stood on the summit. The same stubbornness runs through his business story, which started when he was turned down for one job too many and decided to open his own clinic instead.
From that first clinic in 2005, Tim built the Surrey Physio Group and, after being 'stitched up' by a landlord who set up a rival clinic behind his back with two of his own physios, resolved to never lease again. The group now owns six of its clinic premises, and along the way Tim's tech experiments — most of which failed — produced Rehab My Patient, an exercise prescription platform now used across NHS trusts nationwide.
Jared and Tim close on the two forces reshaping physiotherapy: private equity buying up the big chains, and AI. Tim's take is blunt — he can only name two real clinical use cases for AI today, dictation and exercise prescription, and believes hands-on private practice is 'safe for the future' because patients want to be treated by a human.
“If you have that feeling, like, 'I could do a better job than my boss,' then you go and be the boss.”— Tim Allardyce
Coherent gives private clinics one patient relationship engine, recovering revenue lost at enquiry, recall and billing.