Professor of Physical Therapy · Ergonomist/Human Factors Engineer · Physical Therapist
Professor of Physical Therapy & Program Director, Doctor of Physical Therapy Program
School of Health, Plymouth State University
I'm developing an open Clinical Inquiry Ecosystem for physical therapy: how observations become warranted evidence, how physiological and movement mechanisms explain effects, how causal knowledge can be represented computationally, and how population knowledge can support transparent reasoning about an individual patient.
| Scholarly role | Project | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | stats4PT | Statistical inquiry, evidence interpretation, uncertainty, and causal reasoning |
| Generative mechanisms | Physiolog | Clinical physiology textbook, teaching simulations, and physiological models |
| Movement knowledge | Movement Systems | Movement theory, measurement, modeling, adaptation, and HMS Lab empirical inquiry |
| Integration | Models4PT | Curated population causal knowledge with evidence, context, provenance, uncertainty, and disagreement |
| Practice reasoning | Clinical Inference Engine | Patient-specific model instantiation, belief revision, and inspectable inference |
stats4PT evidence + Physiolog mechanisms + Movement Systems knowledge → Models4PT population causal knowledge → Clinical Inference Engine patient-specific instantiation
These projects are conceptually aligned but independently developed. Population evidence and models constrain clinical reasoning; they do not determine care without individual findings, context, uncertainty, and professional judgment.
- Building open books, simulations, and learning resources for physiology and movement systems in physical therapy.
- Developing the Human Movement Systems Laboratory as the clinically oriented empirical research program within Movement Systems.
- Developing transparent representations of evidence, mechanisms, causal claims, provenance, uncertainty, and disagreement.
- Studying how versioned population knowledge can support iterative patient-specific reasoning without automating clinical judgment.
I bring more than 30 years of experience in physical therapy education and more than 25 years of clinical and quantitative research spanning cardiovascular outcomes, physiological measurement, heart rate variability, epidemiology, causal analysis, evidence synthesis, and research design. I founded Plymouth State University's Doctor of Physical Therapy program and teach clinical physiology and a three-course clinical inquiry sequence.
- Professional profile: scollinspt.github.io
- ORCID: 0000-0002-7609-6219
- Writing: The Peripatetic Physical Therapist