5 Big Opportunities for Spine Surgery Research & Development

Here are five areas where spine research and development will focus prominently over the next few years.

1. Clinical outcomes research. There will be a huge focus on clinical effectiveness in the future, which means providing evidence-based outcomes. The government and insurance companies will be asking for comparative effectiveness research before agreeing to cover some procedures and patients will want to know their provider has good outcomes before undergoing treatment…

2. Patient database development. Health systems, national organizations and even physician practices have begun collecting patient data in large registries or databases for more accessible research. Electronic medical records have helped gather this data, but new efforts are connecting different individual registries so surgeons can mine large patient populations from around the country to really understand how effective treatments are…