Across the lifespan injury, illnesses and ageing factors affecting the musculoskeletal or neurological systems can reduce one’s capacity to live an independent life. This issue becomes increasingly problematic for an ageing population. A cornerstone of many physical rehabilitation issues is a biomechanical understanding of the problem and its solution. Despite more than three decades of developments in the field the potential of biomechanics to fully influence healthcare has remained under-exploited due to the problematic nature of communicating complex biomechanical data to other fields and lay people. A multi-disciplinary team in Glasgow has innovated an inclusive method for visualising dynamic biomechanical data, understandable to a wide range of healthcare professionals and lay people and which allows all stakeholders to share in discussions leading to a better understanding of more appropriate rehabilitation. The Glasgow team is now pursuing applications of this method in a series of rehabilitation interventions in its new ‘envisage’ project funded by the UK Medical Research Council’s Lifelong Health and Wellbeing programme. Facilitated by a Butterfield Award from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (GBSF), this paper reports on recent contacts with Japanese colleagues to evaluate the potential for UK-Japan collaboration in the fields of rehabilitation, biomechanics and robotics using this method.