• Lower back
• Rehabilitation
• Assessment
• Treatment

The disability burden due to low back pain (LBP) continues to increase despite increased healthcare costs. There is growing interest in better targeting care for LBP, rather than adopting a ‘one size fits all’ approach, in order to optimally manage the well-recognised heterogeneity of patients with LBP.1–4

This challenge of patient heterogeneity has been approached in different ways. Stratified care, where patients are classified based on certain characteristics and then matched to appropriate treatment pathways, is one relatively simple and efficient method of targeting care.2 Subgrouping approaches based on identifying common clinical features, usually within a single dimension (ie, pain characteristics, movement patterns, psychological profiles), have also been proposed as a way to target care.5 Individualised care goes one step further with each person, as opposed to groups of people, receiving personally tailored care.1 ,3 ,4 However, what does individualised care actually mean?

Many clinicians would argue that they always provide individualised care. However, what this looks like in clinical practice is probably biased by our professional backgrounds, beliefs and …