Every independent clinic has an origin. Ours begins with a conviction: that patients in East London deserved access to the kind of physiotherapy that had, for too long, been available only in Harley Street consulting rooms or well-funded hospital departments.
LPAW was founded around 2015 by Arjun Viswanath — Consultant Physiotherapist, MSc from UCL, with 25+ years of clinical experience across the NHS and private practice including BMI London Independent Hospital and Harley Street. Arjun had spent years working within healthcare systems that, despite their clinical excellence, were not always structured around the patient’s actual needs. Long waits. Fragmented care. Treatments delivered in isolation rather than as part of a coherent rehabilitation plan. A gap between what was clinically possible and what patients were actually receiving.
The answer was to build something different.
The choice to root LPAW in East London — in Bow specifically — was deliberate. This is not a clinic that followed wealth westward. It is a clinic that recognised that the communities of E3, E15, and the surrounding boroughs had the same clinical needs as patients elsewhere in London, and fewer options to meet them.
Bow is not a traditional location for a premium physiotherapy clinic. It does not have the postcode recognition of Harley Street or the footfall of central London. What it has is a community — one that has grown significantly, that contains a diverse mix of patients, athletes, families, and older adults — and that, in our experience, is deeply appreciative of being taken seriously by clinicians who have chosen to be here, not merely to serve here.
From day one, LPAW has operated on the principle that independent, family-owned care produces better outcomes than chain or franchise models. Clinical decisions at LPAW are made by clinicians. There is no head office evaluating throughput metrics. There is no investor pressure to reduce appointment lengths. There is a founder and a team who care about what happens to the person in front of them.
If there is a single moment that defines what LPAW is willing to do for its patients, it is the decision to build and maintain an on-site hydrotherapy pool.
Hydrotherapy pools are expensive to build, expensive to run, and require ongoing clinical and maintenance expertise. They have disappeared from NHS physiotherapy departments across the country, leaving patients with chronic pain, post-surgical rehabilitation needs, and conditions like fibromyalgia without access to one of the most effective therapeutic environments available.
Arjun’s decision to invest in an on-site pool — heated to 36°C, the warmest in East London — was not commercially obvious. It was clinically obvious. For the patients who need hydrotherapy most — those with the most complex, chronic, and painful conditions — it is often the most important treatment available. LPAW built the pool because those patients deserved it.
That pool has since treated post-surgical patients who came to us within days of hospital discharge. It has been the turning point for fibromyalgia patients who had reached a dead end elsewhere. It has supported children with cerebral palsy to achieve movement goals their families had been told to stop hoping for. It is heated to 36°C every day, used every day, and it represents — more than any other single feature of our clinic — the kind of commitment to patient care that we believe a truly independent clinic should be willing to make.
What We Do
From a single treatment room in Bow, LPAW has grown to a team of 19 clinicians, two locations — our flagship at Bow and our satellite clinic inside The Gym Group Stratford at East Village — and a patient base of more than 6,500 people treated over a decade.
This growth has been built on referrals. Not advertising campaigns, not SEO alone, not corporate contracts — though we have those too. Referrals from patients who recovered and told their friends. Referrals from GPs who trust us. Referrals from Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeons who know their post-operative patients will be managed with the same rigour they expect in theatre.
We have grown because we have been good — and because we have been honest when the answer wasn’t what the patient hoped to hear.
LPAW’s commitment to East London extends beyond clinical care. We host official student placements for:
These partnerships reflect a belief that clinical education is inseparable from clinical practice. The clinicians who train here — shadowing our experienced team, observing our diagnostic processes, understanding how to treat the whole patient — carry that standard into the wider healthcare system. We are proud of that.
All new clinicians joining LPAW — regardless of their prior experience — complete a mandatory intensive shadowing placement with Arjun Viswanath before seeing patients independently. This is not standard practice in most physiotherapy settings. At LPAW, it is non-negotiable. It is the mechanism by which we maintain clinical consistency across 19 practitioners.
LPAW’s identity in East London is not only clinical. We are the official injury prevention partner for Sportas, a community sports organisation. We work with OT Basketball as a community sports partner. We are affiliated with ESBI, a running club community in East London that has been part of our patient network for years.
These are not marketing partnerships. They are relationships built with organisations that share our belief that a healthy community requires good healthcare and good sport — and that the two should be closely connected.
Over the years, LPAW has built a significant medico-legal practice — working with case managers, solicitors, and insurers to provide physiotherapy rehabilitation and clinical reporting for patients following personal injury, road traffic accidents, and workplace incidents. Our medico-legal partners include HCML, TTN, Corpore, NeuroHealth, Complete Care, ProClaim, and others.
This work reflects the same clinical standards as our private and NHS-referred patients. Every report Arjun and the team produce carries the same rigour. Every rehabilitation programme for a medico-legal patient is designed for clinical outcomes, not report convenience.
A decade is a long time. LPAW has added clinicians, services, equipment, and a second location. The hydrotherapy pool has been running for years. The Med-X Spinal Gym has helped hundreds of patients with chronic back pain that had resisted everything else. We have the Excio Biofeedback Pelvic Floor Trainer — one of the only ones in the UK.
But the things that were true at the beginning are still true.
We are independent. We are family-owned. Clinical decisions are made by clinicians. We are not a chain and we will not become one. We are in Bow because this is where we chose to be. And every person who comes through our doors — whether they arrive with a sports injury sustained at a Sunday league match, or a chronic condition they have been managing for a decade, or a scan result they don’t yet understand — is treated by a clinician who has completed the training we require, follows the standards we set, and cares about the outcome.
