Developing National Infrastructure for Federated Learning in Digital Health - NINA
Principal Advisor: Professor Clair Sullivan
Email: c.sullivan1@uq.edu.au
Organisational unit: Centre for Health Services Research
Research group: Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC)
Australia's data problem impacts the care continuum, preventing large-scale research efforts targeting chronic diseases. These havelong-lasting persistent effects, association with other health conditions and social and economic burden, NINA will address this gap by implementing a data infrastructure based on a technique known as federated learning (FL). Instead of bringing data sets together, the data sets will remain in situ, and we will send the analysis to the data sets—a technique known as federated learning. There is currently noFL for healthcare research in Australia. This disruptive technology allows learnings to be gained from health data across organisations and states without attempting traditional integration. It will provide Australia's researchers and Industry with an ethical pathway to access large-scale comprehensive health data to accelerate research and improve outcomes for chronic disease. We will pioneer new and innovative ways to connect and interrogate data sets separated by geography, care setting and provider. In addition, we will demonstrate howFL can accelerate the use of data and analytics (including AI) in research and clinical care, with a focus on chronic disease exemplars of diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and cancer.
This is an Earmarked scholarship project that aligns with a recently awarded Australian Government grant.