SNS Doctors Can Now Prescribe Sword Health's Remote Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation, Which the Company Says Is Free to Patients
Since 13 October, SNS doctors can prescribe Sword Health's at-home pelvic floor programme for incontinence, pelvic pain and recovery after childbirth. How it works, and how to ask your doctor about it.
Since Tuesday 13 October, doctors in the Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS) have been able to prescribe a remote pelvic floor rehabilitation programme run by Sword Health, the Portuguese health technology company. In a statement reported by Lusa and carried by Observador, Sword said the programme can be prescribed in every public health centre and hospital in the country, at no cost to patients. Those two claims come from the company; the government's own statements, quoted in the same release, do not repeat them.
It is Sword's second step into the public system. In June, SNS doctors began prescribing its AI-supported remote physiotherapy for back, knee and shoulder pain.
Who it is for
Sword says doctors can prescribe the programme for conditions such as endometriosis, urinary incontinence and rehabilitation after childbirth. Pelvic floor dysfunction also covers faecal incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse and pelvic pain.
The company cites an analysis of more than 10,000 Portuguese women in which one in ten reported urinary incontinence, rising from 6.3 percent of women aged 18 to 39 to 40.8 percent of those aged 75 to 85. It also points to a national study of 1,200 women over 50: 61 percent had experienced incontinence, and half had never mentioned it to a doctor. Sword did not name either study in the statement.
The Secretary of State for Health, Ana Povo, said projections suggest up to one million women in Portugal could benefit from better access to pelvic floor rehabilitation, with treatment at home and "without unnecessary travel or waiting times". Carla Rodrigues, Deputy Secretary of State for Youth and Equality, said women's specific health needs must be recognised and met "with dignity and quality".
How the treatment works
According to Sword, once a doctor has prescribed the programme, the patient registers on the company's platform and has an initial consultation with its clinical team, which sets a treatment plan. She is then sent a certified intravaginal device that measures pelvic floor muscle activity and sends the readings in real time to the Sword app, and the clinical team follows her progress remotely.
The state contract behind it
The programme runs under a national convention for tele-rehabilitation in physical and rehabilitation medicine, authorised by Despacho n.º 1211/2026 of 3 February. Its standard terms, published by the Administração Central do Sistema de Saúde (ACSS) in Aviso n.º 3864/2026/2, list pelvic floor conditions among those covered: urinary or faecal incontinence, sexual dysfunction, chronic pelvic pain, and rehabilitation after childbirth or pelvic surgery.
The terms require the device to carry CE marking and be registered with INFARMED as a class IIa medical device. The convention is not exclusive to Sword: any provider that meets the conditions may join it.
How to ask for it
Under the ACSS terms, the convention covers SNS users referred by their attending doctor at an SNS health unit. In practice, a woman registered with the SNS, including an immigrant with a user number, should raise the symptoms with her family doctor or hospital doctor and ask whether remote pelvic floor rehabilitation is suitable. The terms also say the patient must have enough digital skills to use the technology on her own, so anyone unsure about using an app should tell the doctor.
