FeARH: Federated machine learning with anonymous random hybridization on electronic medical records

J Biomed Inform. 2021 May:117:103735. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2021.103735. Epub 2021 Mar 9.

Abstract

Electrical medical records are restricted and difficult to centralize for machine learning model training due to privacy and regulatory issues. One solution is to train models in a distributed manner that involves many parties in the process. However, sometimes certain parties are not trustable, and in this project, we aim to propose an alternative method to traditional federated learning with central analyzer in order to conduct training in a situation without a trustable central analyzer. The proposed algorithm is called "federated machine learning with anonymous random hybridization (abbreviated as 'FeARH')", using mainly hybridization algorithm to degenerate the integration of connections between medical record data and models' parameters by adding randomization into the parameter sets shared to other parties. Based on our experiment, our new algorithm has similar AUCROC and AUCPR results compared with machine learning in a centralized manner and original federated machine learning.

Keywords: Federated machine learning; Hybridization; Medical record; Privacy.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Electronic Health Records*
  • Machine Learning*
  • Privacy
  • Research Design