Clinician-educators, building the way we learn.
BrainSmith is a continuing education and clinical residency company founded by physical therapists who teach. Our mission is to deliver innovative, engaging, and accessible pathways to knowledge while keeping the relationship with each learner at the center.
Continuing education should change what happens in the clinic on Monday.
Most CE is built to satisfy a checklist. BrainSmith is built around how clinicians actually learn: a highly curated library of current, fresh courses built by experts, mapped to the competencies each specialty expects, and delivered on a platform that tracks growth over a career rather than a weekend.
The same philosophy runs through everything we make, from the Primary Care Certificate to Smart Residencies designed with clinic owners and health systems.
Every course traces its learning objectives to published standards, including the APTA Description of Specialty Practice.
The faculty who write the curriculum teach it, answer questions, and keep it current and fresh as the evidence moves.
Every hour a learner completes is tracked on the BrainSmith platform, ready for renewal, audit, and the next step in their career.
We build AI-enabled learning tools and we teach clinicians and faculty how to use AI ethically and effectively.
Five ways to work with BrainSmith.
Everything we offer comes from the same place: clinician-educators who teach, practice, and build.
Certificates and courses built as real curriculum. Sequenced, mapped to published competencies, and tracked on one lifetime CE record.
Residency and fellowship programs designed with the clinics, health systems, and academic programs that will run them, from structure and mentoring to outcomes.
Design and build support for degree programs, hybrid DPT curricula, and the courses inside them, from accreditation planning through the first cohort.
Strategy, training, and working tools for clinics and educators who want to use AI well, with learner and patient data handled carefully.
Expert guidance for faculty, program directors, and organizations on teaching, assessment, and how clinicians actually learn.
The people behind the platform.
Clinician-educators and a technologist. Everyone here teaches, practices, or builds, and most do more than one.
Eric Robertson
Eric has taught in DPT programs for nearly twenty years and specializes in building hybrid DPT programs and residency and fellowship programs. He is an expert educator and consultant with experience on the business side of major healthcare organizations. His expertise in education, primary care, orthopaedic manual therapy, and artificial intelligence is recognized worldwide. He is also the founder and host of the PT Outcast podcast.
Carly Lochala
Carly is a board-certified neurologic clinical specialist and runs the operations side of BrainSmith. Her job is to make sure the learner's experience holds up in practice, from how a course is sequenced to how quickly a question gets answered. Her clinical work centers on dizziness and vestibular disorders, and she brings that lens to how every course is built.
Stephanie Irwin
Stephanie is an orthopaedic clinical specialist and a fellowship-trained manual physical therapist. She directs BrainSmith's residency programs and partnerships, working with clinics, health systems, and academic programs that want to build a residency or strengthen one they already run. Her teaching centers on examination, diagnosis, and hands-on management. Stephanie owns and operates Rise Physical Therapy in Seattle, WA.
Hoda Maleki
Hoda is a professor of computer science with a focus on cybersecurity and agentic AI systems, and she leads the technology behind BrainSmith. She guides the platform and its AI strategy, and she is an expert educator with experience building intelligent learning platforms and the data-driven infrastructure behind how clinicians learn.
Hear how we think about the future of practice.
Eric Robertson, host of the PT Outcast podcast, on AI in healthcare, sustainability, and innovation in physical therapy.
Start with a course, or bring us your program.
Clinicians can enroll today. Clinic owners, health systems, and DPT programs can talk with us about residencies, AI consulting, and organizational learning.