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By supporting the work of the International Spine Registries (ISR), we’re helping to enhance the evidence around implant performance and support best practice in patient care. We speak to the founder, Keith Tucker, about ISR’s ambitions and its approach.

Established in 2022, International Spine Registries (ISR) brings together spine care and spine registry experts from the around the world. Its ambition is to provide gold-standard evidence on the performance of spinal implants, giving surgeons, regulators, medical device companies, and registry providers, the global insight they need to shape the future of patient care.

Clinician-led and collaboration-focused  

Spearheaded by Keith Tucker FRCS (Tr&Orth), a former Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and a leading registries expert, ISR builds on the work of the Orthopaedic Data Evaluation Panel (ODEP). ODEP provides ratings on the quality and longevity of implant performance and safety data.

Welcoming a broad range of stakeholders, ISR brings together international surgeons, national registries, medical device companies, and regulators. Keith explains why collaboration is vital to better spine care:

“To deliver the best outcomes for patients, you need granular information on how different implants perform over time. Our goal is to enhance the volume and quality of that data by working towards common collection methods for spinal registries across the world. By having everyone in the room – representatives from registries, manufacturers and regulators as well as surgeons – we can develop meaningful standards that work for all parties.”

Keith Tucker, Founder

Providing better data for all

Among the many spine care registries globally, data collection methods vary. Some collect detailed information on procedures but only include the brand of an implant. Others, like EUROSPINE’s Spine Tango registry, collect granular information at implant level, right down to the individual rods and screws.

In countries that may perform only a small number of particular procedures, this variation in collection methods can prevent manufacturers from proving efficacy to regulators due to the small data set. This can potentially lead to implants being removed from the market, which then limits the options available to surgeons and as a result, patients

The goal of ISR is to align data collection globally to enhance decision making for all stakeholders.

Support from NEC Software Solutions

We’ve supported ISR since the start, having worked closely with Keith on the operation of the National Joint Registry as well the ODEP and Beyond Compliance initiatives. Our principal business consultant Oge Swaby leads our work in this area and was present at its first in-person meeting in March 2023. Oge explains:

“The idea behind the ISR is to harmonise the data that is collected by all Spine registries. As an expert on the process of putting registries together, my role is to help establish the principles and the practice required to achieve this.”

Keith adds:

“The support from NEC Software Solutions has been invaluable. Their expertise with data science and existing work with EUROSPINE makes a real difference. Like me, Oge understands the value of collaboration and that is absolutely vital as we move ahead.”

Keith Tucker, Founder

Starting with minimum data sets

So far, work has centered on three areas – minimum data set, Implant recording and recommended PROMs with policy papers published to support these three areas:

  1. The procedure: data on the patient’s condition, procedure type, surgeon, hospital, any complications and clinical results.
  2. The device: product-level codes, including unique codes even for different sizes of the same product and when and how barcode scanning should take place.
  3. The outcomes: patient reported outcome measures (PROMs)).

The response to these papers and associated guidance documents will be on the agenda for the next meeting in Copenhagen in October 2025.

Keith concludes:

“Thanks to the support of ISR members, who are all motivated by a desire for better patient care, we won’t just be enhancing the data in existing registries. We’ll also be giving any new national or international spine registries a good place to start. Device monitoring is vital to developing ever-better treatments, and I would like to thank everyone for their hard work so far.”

Keith Tucker, Founder

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