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Low back pain is a prevalent disorder and a frequent cause of disability. It is associated with increased costs for the healthcare system and society in developed countries, affecting 70% of the general population at some point in their lives, with an annual incidence of 40%. Back pain has a tendency to become chronic or produce relapses that can severely affect the daily life of patients who suffer it.

Identifying predictors of chronicity has become a priority for researchers on lumbar pathology. It is not possible find a precise pain cause for about 85% of cases. Studies evaluating the presence of anatomical or structural changes in the lumbar spine by techniques such as computerized tomography , magnetic resonance or discography are not able to correlate these anomalies with a bad prognosis in low back pain. The concept that associates chronic pain with structural alterations should be reconsidered taking into account the recent scientific evidence.

The term Big Data refers to an amount of data that exceeds the capacity of standard software to be captured, managed and processed within a reasonable time. Hospitals have massive amounts of clinical and imaging data in different formats. The health sector is one of the sectors where Big Data is having greater impact today and where their applications grow spectacularly in the medical area as well in the management of health centres, hospital management and scientific documentation (generation, storage and use).

Another concept is Crowd Intelligence, based on the predictive ability of the average assessment of many individuals. The aggregation of information from many groups leads to better decisions and solutions that would offer individual experts.

At present, there is uncertainty about the indicators for surgery for low back pain. The approach of using Big Data and Crowd Intelligence has not been explored and may be useful to establish the indicators for surgery led by image parameters applying these concepts.

MIDAS is a collaborative project made with the Arnau de Villanova Hospital . Traumatology Service.