CODA: an open-source platform for federated analysis and machine learning on distributed healthcare data

OBJECTIVES

Distributed computations facilitate multi-institutional data analysis while avoiding the costs and complexity of data pooling. Existing approaches lack crucial features, such as built-in medical standards and terminologies, no-code data visualizations, explicit disclosure control mechanisms, and support for basic statistical computations, in addition to gradient-based optimization capabilities.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We describe the development of the Collaborative Data Analysis (CODA) platform, and the design choices undertaken to address the key needs identified during our survey of stakeholders. We use a public dataset (MIMIC-IV) to demonstrate end-to-end multi-modal FL using CODA. We assessed the technical feasibility of deploying the CODA platform at 9 hospitals in Canada, describe implementation challenges, and evaluate its scalability on large patient populations.

RESULTS

The CODA platform was designed, developed, and deployed between January 2020 and January 2023. Software code, documentation, and technical documents were released under an open-source license. Multi-modal federated averaging is illustrated using the MIMIC-IV and MIMIC-CXR datasets. To date, 8 out of the 9 participating sites have successfully deployed the platform, with a total enrolment of >1M patients. Mapping data from legacy systems to FHIR was the biggest barrier to implementation.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The CODA platform was developed and successfully deployed in a public healthcare setting in Canada, with heterogeneous information technology systems and capabilities. Ongoing efforts will use the platform to develop and prospectively validate models for risk assessment, proactive monitoring, and resource usage. Further work will also make tools available to facilitate migration from legacy formats to FHIR and DICOM.

Automated screening of potential organ donors using a temporal machine learning model

Organ donation is not meeting demand, and yet 30-60% of potential donors are potentially not identified. Current systems rely on manual identification and referral to an Organ Donation Organization (ODO). We hypothesized that developing an automated screening system based on machine learning could reduce the proportion of missed potentially eligible organ donors. Using routine clinical data and laboratory time-series, we retrospectively developed and tested a neural network model to automatically identify potential organ donors. We first trained a convolutive autoencoder that learned from the longitudinal changes of over 100 types of laboratory results. We then added a deep neural network classifier. This model was compared to a simpler logistic regression model. We observed an AUROC of 0.966 (CI 0.949-0.981) for the neural network and 0.940 (0.908-0.969) for the logistic regression model. At a prespecified cutoff, sensitivity and specificity were similar between both models at 84% and 93%. Accuracy of the neural network model was robust across donor subgroups and remained stable in a prospective simulation, while the logistic regression model performance declined when applied to rarer subgroups and in the prospective simulation. Our findings support using machine learning models to help with the identification of potential organ donors using routinely collected clinical and laboratory data.

Integrating artificial intelligence in bedside care for covid-19 and future pandemics

Michael Yu and colleagues examine the challenges in developing AI tools for use at point of care