The symposium brings together three complementary perspectives. First, implementation experiences of digital rehabilitation approaches in humanitarian and development contexts are examined based on co-innovation work in East Africa and Southeast Asia. Evidence from Indonesia and Rwanda highlights the importance of early and continuous collaboration with local stakeholders, including clinicians, community health workers, service users, and policymakers. The findings show that effective digital rehabilitation requires contextual adaptation to local cultures, service delivery models, and resource constraints rather than deployment as a stand‑alone technological solution. Particular attention is given to workforce integration and alignment with existing clinical workflows and supervision. The co-innovation experiences further emphasize the need for policy and system alignment to support sustainability and scale-up, ensuring that digital rehabilitation strengthens existing health systems in low- and middle-income country settings rather than bypassing them.

Second, emerging comparative evidence from low back pain care in Rwanda and Indonesia is presented. In Rwanda, an exploratory study (n=94) found that digital rehabilitation delivered via the Inclusion App and community health workers was less costly than standard physiotherapy and was associated with greater improvements at one and three months in overall health and EQ-5D-5L quality-of-life outcomes. In Indonesia, a multisite exploratory study (n=136) compared standard physiotherapy, digital rehabilitation, and blended pathways. All groups improved over three months; however, digital rehabilitation showed the greatest improvements in pain and health-related quality of life while remaining less costly. The blended pathway also outperformed standard care, suggesting the benefits of integrating digital components into routine services.

Third, the symposium addresses the role of human-centered AI in rehabilitation building on earlier implementation experiences and cost‑effectiveness insights. The AIRe Platform is an open-source, professionally supervised digital support layer that can be applied across a range of rehabilitation needs to support self-management and guide individuals to appropriate care pathways while maintaining clinician oversight and person-centered care. Overall, this perspective emphasizes the flexibility of human-centered AI-supported solutions to complement existing rehabilitation services and support their integration into routine clinical practice across diverse health system contexts.

Together, these contributions provide a structured perspective on how digitally supported care pathways and human-centered AI can be integrated to strengthen equitable, efficient, and sustainable rehabilitation services across diverse contexts.

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