Cited by 126Privacy-Preserving Technologies in DataArtificial Intelligence in Healthcare and EducationMachine Learning in Healthcare

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 113 of the 113 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 80 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

A Comprehensive Survey on Federated Learning Techniques for Healthcare Informatics

Open access
Dasaradharami Reddy, K., Gadekallu, Thippa Reddy·2023·Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience

Abstract

Healthcare is predominantly regarded as a crucial consideration in promoting the general physical and mental health and well‐being of people around the world. The amount of data generated by healthcare systems is enormous, making it challenging to manage. Many machine learning (ML) approaches were implemented to develop dependable and robust solutions to handle the data. ML cannot fully utilize data due to privacy concerns. This primarily happens in the case of medical data. Due to a lack of precise clinical data, the application of ML for the same is challenging and may not yield desired results. Federated learning (FL), which is a recent development in ML where the computation is offloaded to the source of data, appears to be a promising solution to this problem. In this study, we present a detailed survey of applications of FL for healthcare informatics. We initiate a discussion on the need for FL in the healthcare domain, followed by a review of recent review papers. We focus on the fundamentals of FL and the major motivations behind FL for healthcare applications. We then present the applications of FL along with recent state of the art in several verticals of healthcare. Then, lessons learned, open issues, and challenges that are yet to be solved are also highlighted. This is followed by future directions that give directions to the prospective researchers willing to do their research in this domain.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This survey reviews federated learning (FL) for healthcare informatics, arguing that FL enables multi-institution collaboration without centralizing sensitive patient data. It covers applications in medical imaging, IoT-based smart healthcare, EHR management, health cooperation, and COVID-19 outbreak prediction, then outlines challenges and future directions.

Key findings

  • FL is presented as a privacy-preserving alternative to centralized ML for healthcare, allowing data to remain local while models are shared; the survey notes FL was first proposed by Google in 2016 for Gboard, which supports more than 600 languages.
  • In COVID-19, the survey cites Xu et al.’s multi-institution chest CT study in Wuhan, China, as achieving improved detection sensitivity, and Vaid et al.’s finding that FL-based models outperformed locally trained predictive models for 7-day mortality in hospitalized patients.
  • Major challenges identified include privacy versus performance tradeoffs, trusted versus nontrusted collaboration, data breaches via model updates/gradients, non-IID data causing FedAvg failures, traceability and accountability, system architecture, client management, and health dataset issues.
  • Future directions highlighted include Healthcare 5.0, digital twins, blockchain, collaborative robots, explainable AI, and 6G integration.

Methods

  • Design: a comprehensive narrative survey/state-of-the-art review of FL for healthcare informatics, covering fundamentals, motivations, applications, lessons learned, open issues, challenges, and future directions.
  • Data or sample: literature and prior studies; no primary dataset or experiments were conducted. Examples span medical imaging (MRI, brain tumor segmentation, skin disease, thyroid ultrasound, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), IoT/EHR systems, health cooperation, and COVID-19.
  • Main analysis: qualitative synthesis organized by healthcare verticals and challenge categories, with summary tables of key findings from reviewed works.

Limitations

  • The paper does not explicitly state limitations of its own survey; it states that open challenges remain, including privacy-preserving hyperparameter optimization, entity resolution for vertically split data, efficient encryption, and many unanswered technical questions.
  • Evident from the text: no formal systematic review protocol, search strategy, inclusion/exclusion criteria, or quantitative meta-analysis is described; it is a narrative survey without primary experiments.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1155/2023/8393990

Cites

113 of 113 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Figures

Figure 1 Differential privacy.
Figure 1 Differential privacy.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 2 Application of FL for personal healthcare.
Figure 2 Application of FL for personal healthcare.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 3 FL for the healthcare system.
Figure 3 FL for the healthcare system.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 4 The FedHealth framework in which “user” represents an organization.
Figure 4 The FedHealth framework in which “user” represents an organization.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 5 FL architecture.
Figure 5 FL architecture.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 6 Applications of FL in medical image processing.
Figure 6 Applications of FL in medical image processing.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 7 IoT-based smart healthcare.
Figure 7 IoT-based smart healthcare.CC BY · PubMed Central

Verification

Claims the paper makes

65 Not checked yet · 36 No basis given · 25 Own interpretation · 1 Check pending

Verify all 80 references — free account

Show all 28 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 82
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 51
99 of 99
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    A comprehensive discussion of the impact of FL on disease diagnosis and applications in medical imaging, IoT, and the COVID outbreak is still missing.

    “Moreover, a comprehensive discussion of the impact of FL on disease diagnosis and applications in medical imaging, the Internet of things (IoT), and the COVID outbreak is still missing.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    FL effectively overcomes the limitations of classic ML methods by emphasizing data.

    “FL effectively overcomes the limitations of classic ML methods by emphasizing data.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The enormous usage of IoMT devices in daily activities results in an explosive growth of data traffic, machine learning, and data-driven approaches.

    “The enormous usage of IoMT devices in our daily activities results in an explosive growth of data traffic, ML, and data-driven approaches.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    A large number of IoMT devices with massive data in the 6G era will force individuals to deploy efficient machine learning and AI-based algorithms to provide high-quality services.

    “A large number of IoMT devices with massive data in the 6G era will force individuals to deploy efficient ML and AI-based algorithms to provide high-quality services.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Federated learning facilitates communication between various parties without the need to communicate or centralize data, thereby solving difficulties associated with critical health information.

    “FL facilitates communication between various parties without the need to communicate or centralize data, thereby solving difficulties associated with critical health information.”
5 of 5

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

7 of 7

Citations

Cites

1 retracted

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Alazab M., 2016, Spam and crimi- nal activity, Trends and issues in crime and crim- inal justice, 526, 1
  2. Kellogg K., 1999, Learning communities, Eric Digest, 45
  3. Goodfellow I., 2016, Deep Learning
  4. NguyenD. C. DingM. PathiranaP. N. SeneviratneA. LiJ. andPoorH. V. Federated learning for internet of things: A comprehensive survey 2021 arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.07914. · arXiv
  5. KairouzP. McMahanH. B. AventB. Bel- letA. BennisM. BhagojiA. N. BonawitzK. CharlesZ. CormodeG. andCummingsR. Advances and open problems in federated learn- ing 2019 arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.04977. · arXiv

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 126

Metadata

Authors
Dasaradharami Reddy, K., & Gadekallu, T. R.
Affiliations
Vellore Institute of Technology University (IN)
Corresponding author
Gadekallu, Thippa Reddy
Venue
Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2023-01
Volume
2023
Issue
1
Pages
8393990-8393990
ISSN
  • 1687-5265 (ISSN-L)
  • 1687-5273
OpenAlex
W4322754240
Cited by
126
References
91
Citations by year
2026: 27 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 23
FWCI
2.63
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Machine Learning in Healthcare
Keywords
federated learning, health informatics, medical data privacy, clinical data, data privacy
MeSH terms
Machine Learning, Humans, Mental Health, Motivation, Prospective Studies, Informatics

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-09, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-09 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review