Advancing Evidence-Based Care
ASCoN provides a collaborative platform for spinal cord injury (SCI) professionals to advance evidence-based care through shared research, clinical best practice, and policy-relevant knowledge exchange across the region.
Research Priorities
Ongoing Projects
The InSCI Collaborative Study remains a core research initiative for ASCoN, involving multiple member countries in comparative outcome studies and shared data collection. The collaboration supports cross-regional learning and evidence generation aimed at improving spinal cord injury care, rehabilitation outcomes, and long-term quality of life.
International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS)
Asian Spinal Cord Network (ASCoN)
Pilot Project [IDAPP]
The International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) launched the Asian Spinal Cord Network Pilot Project (IDAPP) to test the feasibility of creating a standardized, web-based spinal cord injury (SCI) database across the region.
The pilot involved nine centres across six Asian countries, enrolling 975 patients with traumatic SCI over one year. Using the International SCI Core Data Set and a specially developed Minimal Safety Data Set, the study demonstrated that high-quality SCI data can be collected efficiently using a low-cost, user-friendly digital platform.
Findings highlighted key regional trends including a predominance of young male patients, falls as the leading cause of injury, and a higher proportion of complete and thoracic injuries compared with high-income countries.
The IDAPP initiative confirmed that a sustainable, multinational SCI registry is both feasible and practical in resource-constrained settings — laying the foundation for the global ISCoS Database Project (IDaP) and demonstrating ASCoN’s capacity to lead collaborative research networks.
