14/09/2026
Why do humanoid robots attract billions while rehabilitation robots are still asked to prove they deserve a billing code?
It is not because rehabilitation matters less. It is because capital understands labour substitution far more easily than it understands human recovery. A humanoid has a simple story: One robot. One worker replaced. One productivity equation.
Rehabilitation is harder. A rehabilitation technology has to fit the patient, therapist workflow, clinical evidence, procurement process, reimbursement model, maintenance programme and ultimately demonstrate that better recovery is worth paying for.
That complexity has held the field back. But I also think it points to the opportunity. Rehabilitation robotics does not need another “better robot” story. It needs to become accountable recovery infrastructure.
The real questions should be: How much recovery capacity can we create per therapist? Which patients benefit, at what dose?
Can we measure functional improvement longitudinally? Can technology reduce clinical burden without removing clinical judgement? And can we connect those outcomes to an economic model that hospitals and payers can actually fund?
AI matters here too — but not as an “AI-powered” label. It matters when it helps us stratify patients, adapt therapy, identify non-response, reduce documentation burden and turn real-world rehabilitation into payer-grade evidence. The future of rehabilitation technology may depend less on making robots look more impressive — and more on making recovery economically visible.
That is a much harder problem. It may also be the more important one. https://zenkoh.substack.com/p/why-humanoids-get-the-money-while
