A scoping review of the governance of federated learning in healthcare

Abstract In healthcare, federated learning (FL) is emerging as a methodology to enable the analysis of large and disparate datasets while allowing custodians to retain sovereignty. While FL minimises data-sharing challenges, concerns surrounding ethics, privacy, maleficent use, and harm remain. Thes...

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Main Authors: Rebekah Eden, Ignatius Chukwudi, Chris Bain, Sebastiano Barbieri, Leonie Callaway, Susan de Jersey, Yasmeen George, Alain-Dominique Gorse, Michael Lawley, Peter Marendy, Steven M. McPhail, Anthony Nguyen, Mahnaz Samadbeik, Clair Sullivan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-07-01
Series:npj Digital Medicine
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01836-3
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Summary:Abstract In healthcare, federated learning (FL) is emerging as a methodology to enable the analysis of large and disparate datasets while allowing custodians to retain sovereignty. While FL minimises data-sharing challenges, concerns surrounding ethics, privacy, maleficent use, and harm remain. These concerns can be managed by effective data governance. Data governance specifies procedural, relational, and structural mechanisms governing how data is captured, shared, and analysed, the resultant models and their use. However, limited insights exist on the optimal governance of this emerging technology. This study aims to develop a consolidated framework of the data governance mechanisms for FL in healthcare. A scoping review was performed, using deductive and inductive analysis of 39 articles. The framework includes twelve procedural, ten relational, and twelve structural mechanisms. The framework directs researchers to examine how to enact each mechanism and provides practitioners with insights into the mechanism to consider when governing FL.
ISSN:2398-6352