April 9, 2026 · FlexPath team
How FlexPath handles red flags
A short explainer on the three-tier escalation system that routes users from self-guided exercises to in-person clinical care.
FlexPath is a wellness tool, not a medical device. But wellness tools still need safety rails — especially when people with real pain are using them to decide whether to move or not.
Our safety system has three tiers.
Tier 1 — automatic difficulty adjustment
Most pain isn't a red flag; it's just pain. If you tell us your pain is trending up, the AI takes it seriously. It downgrades your program difficulty, swaps out exercises that you've flagged as "too painful", and watches for a rebound.
If pain is down and completion is high, it goes the other way and adds progression.
Tier 2 — free physiotherapist check-in
If your pain has been elevated for seven consecutive days, Tier 1 has had its chance and it's time to bring in a human. We offer you a free 15-minute video check-in with a partner physiotherapist. No charge, no commitment.
If the physio says "keep doing what you're doing, here's an adjustment" — great. If they say "this is beyond what the app should handle" — that's Tier 3.
Tier 3 — pause + clinic referral
Red flags — unexplained weight loss, progressive weakness, night pain with no mechanical cause, saddle paresthesia — mean we shouldn't be coaching you to do anything. The app pauses. Your subscription pauses. We route you to in-person care.
We take this so seriously that it's enforced at the database layer — a Postgres trigger on our escalation-events table pauses the subscription automatically, so no call site has to remember to do it. Belt and suspenders.
Why this matters
We can't build a wellness tool that's safe for the general population if we only pay attention to the 95% of users where the AI is enough. The 5% where it isn't is what separates a useful tool from one we shouldn't be building at all.