Building a global spine atlas: Pioneering collaborative data calls to advance spine care.
What is Spine Atlas Initiative (SAI)
Inspired by international cancer registration, Spine Atlas is an international epidemiological initiative to visualise spine services and practice variations in spinal care across geographical boundaries.
Who can be part of Spine Atlas?
All units performing spine treatments and all spine registries are invited to participate in the data calls and join the group authorship.
How to be part of Spine Atlas?
The next data call (2026) will be focussing on treatment strategies and variations in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM).
Each participating unit is expected to provide 7 mandatory parameters and 7 optional parameters in a structured manner for each patient treated during a four-month period between February and May 2026.
If you already have a EUROSPINE account, please log in first and then proceed with your registration.
Being part of a large international network of spine experts and spine units, increasing visibility and which may lead to various research projects and collaborations
Benchmarking own data with the pooled data of all other hospitals and countries.
Understanding epidemiology and practice variation across countries
Access to international epidemiological data
Visualization of spine care services
Data basis to all key stakeholders for planning and developing health structures, education, research and quality assurance
Unique source of comparable diagnosis and treatment data for researchers worldwide
Understanding the evolving magnitude and patterns of spine pathologies and treatments in different regions and countries.
Evidence for the origins of variability across regions, which may it be due to environmental, behavioural, societal, medical school, guideline, or other reasons, and may show potential for improvement across multiple factors
We discriminate between three following type of participants:
An individual hospital: The effort to extract mandatory parameters from approximately 20-40 average patients with lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis per average unit over a 3-month period, as well as to complete the data quality survey, is expected to take approximately 2 hours in total.
An established registry: mapping parameters may be required, followed by data extraction of registry data and completion of data quality survey
A Spine Tango hospital: continued data collection, no data extraction effort, completion of data quality survey takes approx. 5-15 min in total.
The protocol of the first Spine Atlas Initiative (SAI) has been assessed by the Ethics Committee of Ostschweiz Switzerland (EKOS), BASEC submission no. AO_2024-00111. EKOS confirmed that there are no ethical objections as long as the data are anonymised and patient consent is obtained as described in the SAI protocol. Within the field of human research, the project does not require prior/further approval from the ethics committee. Data protection must be ensured. Please consult with your local ethics committee or regulators, if a separate ethical approval is needed for this specific data call. For application templates and decisions on the first data call see below. Please remember to share any additional votes with us by uploading it in your participant section in the data call management platform. Further decisions and a full application template for DCM will be provided in due time.
The Spine Atlas Initiative aims to visualise epidemiology on spine treatments periodically by and across countries, providing a comprehensive view of the global landscape.
The Initiative is coordinated and funded by EUROSPINE and will be steered by a Steering Committee with Christian Herrmann leading the project as Principal Investigator (PI).
Christian Herrmann,PhD MSc
Principal Investigator Spine Atlas Initiative, Epidemiology EUROSPINE, The Spine Society of Europe
Clinical research Chair Spine Tango Committee Research Director National Scoliosis Center, Fairfax, Virginia, US President of the International Society on Scoliosis Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation
Emin Aghayev, MD MSc
Medical registries Senior Advisor Spine Tango Head Research Development at Lindenhofgruppe
Pierre Côté, MS
Epidemiology Professor Ontario Tech University Research Excellence Director, Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Ontario, Canada
Florian Ringel, PhD MD
Neurosurgery, Representative from the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies (EANS) Director of the Department of Neurosurgery, University Medical Center Mainz Chairman of the EANS Spine Section, President elect of the German Spine Society
Jarkko Halme, MD
Orthopaedic surgery, International Spine Registries Group Representative Finnish Spine Registry President European Spine Society Advisory Board (EuSSAB)
Sashin Ahuja, MD MSc
Orthopaedic surgery, International Spine Registries Group Representative British Spine Registry
Spine Atlas
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
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