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Today there is growing awareness among spine surgeons of the advantages in using registers to facilitate the analyses and reporting of treatment outcome. The Swedish Spine register is among the first to be used on a national scale and annual reports are published in international journals. In this paper we discuss our experiences and lessons learned from a paper-based version in 1993, to an online web-based solution in 2005. We emphasise the advantages of registers being owned by the national spine society, a support function available during working hours, online feedback to participating departments and professional assistance in designing a register program for web use. Hopefully, our experiences will be of help to colleagues who are planning to start registering.