Enhancing survival analysis through federated learning in non-IID and scarce data scenarios

Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Survival Analysis (SA) has advanced predictive modeling in healthcare, enabling precise and personalized predictions of time-to-event outcomes, such as patient survival. However, real-world SA datasets often suffer from data scarcity, heterogeneity, and privacy constraints, which limit the applicability of traditional and modern AI methods. To address these challenges, we propose the Federated Synthetic Data Sharing (FedSDS) framework, which integrates synthetic data generation with Federated Learning (FL). For SA, we leverage SAVAE, a state-of-the-art model for complex datasets. Using the Variational Autoencoder-Bayesian Gaussian Mixture model enhanced with artificial inductive bias, FedSDS generates high-quality synthetic data locally and shares them among nodes, enabling collaborative model training without direct data sharing. FedSDS introduces a biased aggregation strategy that aligns synthetic data with local distributions, outperforming traditional FL methods, such as Federated Average. Validated under independent and identically distributed (IID) and non-IID scenarios, FedSDS mitigates data imbalances and heterogeneity, showing significant performance improvements in scarce and heterogeneous data. The proposed framework offers a scalable and privacy-preserving solution for SA in decentralized environments. By enhancing model generalizability and robustness, FedSDS provides a promising path forward for collaborative analytics in healthcare, paving the way for improved patient outcomes and greater adoption of federated techniques in real-world applications.

Recommended citation: Apellániz, P. A., Parras, J., & Zazo, S. (2026). Enhancing survival analysis through federated learning in non-IID and scarce data scenarios. Computers in Biology and Medicine, 204, 111558. /files/2026-03-01-fedsavae.pdf