Personalised medicine is one of the new developments that is deemed to revolutionise health care. A key component is the detection of biomarkers, proteins in blood or saliva, for example, whose presence or abnormal concentration is caused by a disease.

Despite being such a common problem, the decision-making process regarding the treatment of lumbar or low back pain is slow and it is hard for clinicians to decide if a patient actually requires a surgical treatments and to predict if these will be successful.