Working Group: Musculoskeletal Spine Modelling
Coordinators
Luigi La Barbera (Politecnico di Milano, Italy; lead)
Tito Bassani (IRCCS Galeazzi-Sant’Ambrogio Hospital, Italy)
Marwan El Rich (Khalifa University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)
Dominika Ignasiak (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
Contact: luigi.labarbera@polimi.it
Update February 2026
Actions taken
The WG Coordinators regularly met online over the past months (Oct. 22nd, Oct. 27th, Nov.10th, Nov. 24th, Dec. 9th in 2025, and Jan. 8th in 2026). ESB Council members (Sandra Loerakker, ESB Webportal and Working Groups Committee and Enrico Dall’Ara, ESB President) also joined the discussion twice (Oct.10th in 2025 just after MSM-WG launch, Feb.13th in 2026 as a 6-months update to ESB Council).
Since its launch, the MSM-WG has attracted the attention of many interested ESB members. The MSM-WG drafted a Participants’ List including about 30 ESB members + 220 researchers, engineers, models’ developers, end-users, clinicians to be reached with MSM-WG actions).
The WG is preparing a Public Survey (main activity planned in 1st year, Oct.2025-Sep.2026) aimed at capturing the current practices, methodologies, challenges, and emerging trends on MSM construction, validation, and application in biomechanical and clinical settings. Besides the name collected in the Participants’ List, the recipients of the Survey will include the ESB community, but also the MSM community worldwide and data will be collected and processed anonymously.
Next steps
The Public Survey draft is now circulating among expert colleagues for improvements and feedback regarding clarity and content. The MSM-WG plans to finalize the Survey Draft and to launch it in Spring (March/April 2026) and to close by the end of Summer (June/July 2026). The initiative will be officially launched with an ESB Webinar and results will be openly published and disseminated with a dedicated ESB Webinar.
