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The Midwest Regional Spinal Cord Injury Care System (MRSCICS) at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is a leading center for innovative, integrated, interdisciplinary research and care for persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) and is one of the original five NIDILRR-designated Model System Spinal Cord Injury Centers (in partnership with Northwestern University and Northwestern Memorial Hospital).
It manages several projects, both unique to MRSCICS and in collaboration with other Model System Spinal Cord Injury Centers.
MRSCICS also contributes data to the National Spinal Cord Injury Database, established in 1973 as a repository of data collected through the collaborative efforts of federally funded SCI Model System Centers.
There are 18 SCI Model System Centers currently contributing data to the Database, with a total of 32 Centers contributing data since the Database’s inception. Through the June of 2022, there were more than 51,000 persons who have sustained traumatic SCI registered in the National SCIMS Database and more than 30,000 persons had follow-up data. This makes it the world's largest and longest active SCI research database and the world’s most extensive source of available information about the characteristics and life course of individuals with SCI. There are individuals enrolled into the National SCIMS Database who have now been followed for 45 years after injury.
Co-Principal investigators on MRSCICS are Allen Heinemann, PhD, director, Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and David Chen, MD, Section Chief of Spinal Cord Injury and George M. Eisenberg Chair at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.