We are at a pivotal moment. The future of healthcare innovation can no longer be defined solely by technological advancement or institutional efficiency. While digital tools, therapies and platforms continue to evolve, they must be embedded within a broader transformation, one that places the human experience at the centre of how we design, deliver and evaluate care. This patient-centred renaissance calls for the integration of both horizontal and vertical forms of knowledge: connecting services across the care continuum. From the literature and our experience, an unexpected byproduct of co-production with patients in health innovation and care delivery is a reduction in complaints, litigation and a significant increase in treatment compliance.¹⁹ This results in a reduction in misdiagnosis,²⁰ over investigation and treatment, giving a reduction in costs in the overall healthcare economy. Empowering patients as innovators is not a symbolic gesture. It is a practical imperative if we are to create pathways that are not only clinically effective but also meaningful and responsive. Fragmented systems that overwhelm or disorient must give way to cohesive and compassionate journeys, designed with and for the people they are meant to serve. This is a call to rethink not only what we innovate, but how and with whom. Let us commit to building systems that honour not just the science of healing, but the individuals we treat. In doing so, we move closer to a future where innovation and empathy are no longer treated as separate domains, but as interdependent pillars of truly transformative care.

The prevention, mitigation and treatment of movement impairments, ideally, requires early diagnosis or identification. As the human movement system has physiological and functional redundancy, movement limitations do not promptly arise at the onset of physical decline. A such, prediction of movement limitations is complex: it is unclear how much decline can be tolerated before movement limitations start. Currently, the term ‘homeostatic reserve’ or ‘physiological reserve’ is used to refer to the redundancy of the human biological system, but these terms do not describe the redundancy in the muscle architecture of the human body. The result of functional redundancy is compensation. Although compensation is an early predictor of movement limitations, clear definitions are lacking and the topic is underexposed in literature. The aim of this article is to provide a definition of compensation and emphasize its importance. Compensation is defined as an alteration in the movement trajectory and/or altering muscle recruitment to complete a movement task. Compensation for capacity is the result of a lack in neuromusculoskeletal reserve, where reserve is defined as the difference between the capacity (physiological abilities of the neuromusculoskeletal system) and the task demand. Compensation for movement objectives is a result of a shift in weighting of movement objectives, reflecting changing priorities. Studying compensation in biomechanics requires altered protocols in experimental set-ups, musculoskeletal models that are not reliant on prescribed movement, and inclusion of alternative movement objectives in optimal control theory.