# Privacy-preserving federated prediction of pain intensity change based on multi-center survey data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.07997 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07997/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning with Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00582/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Federated Learning Systems: Vision, Hype and Reality for Data Privacy and Protection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09693/) (2019)
- [Why do tree-based models still outperform deep learning on tabular data?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08815/) (2022)
- [FedGNN: Federated Graph Neural Network for Privacy-Preserving Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04925/) (2021)
- [From Distributed Machine Learning to Federated Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14362/) (2021)
- [Federated Learning Meets Natural Language Processing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12603/) (2021)
- [A Systematic Literature Review on Federated Learning: From A Model Quality Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.01973/) (2020)
- [Federated Whole Prostate Segmentation in MRI with Personalized Neural Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08111/) (2021)
- [Federated Boosted Decision Trees with Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02910/) (2022)
- [Assessing the risk of re-identification arising from an attack on anonymised data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16921/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Background: Patient-reported survey data are used to train prognostic models aimed at improving healthcare. However, such data are typically available multi-centric and, for privacy reasons, cannot easily be centralized in one data repository. Models trained locally are less accurate, robust, and generalizable. We present and apply privacy-preserving federated machine learning techniques for prognostic model building, where local survey data never leaves the legally safe harbors of the medical centers. Methods: We used centralized, local, and federated learning techniques on two healthcare datasets (GLA:D data from the five health regions of Denmark and international SHARE data of 27 countries) to predict two different health outcomes. We compared linear regression, random forest regression, and random forest classification models trained on local data with those trained on the entire data in a centralized and in a federated fashion. Results: In GLA:D data, federated linear regression (R2 0.34, RMSE 18.2) and federated random forest regression (R2 0.34, RMSE 18.3) models outperform their local counterparts (i.e., R2 0.32, RMSE 18.6, R2 0.30, RMSE 18.8) with statistical significance. We also found that centralized models (R2 0.34, RMSE 18.2, R2 0.32, RMSE 18.5, respectively) did not perform significantly better than the federated models. In SHARE, the federated model (AC 0.78, AUROC: 0.71) and centralized model (AC 0.84, AUROC: 0.66) perform significantly better than the local models (AC: 0.74, AUROC: 0.69). Conclusion: Federated learning enables the training of prognostic models from multi-center surveys without compromising privacy and with only minimal or no compromise regarding model performance.