A multi-hospital initiative sparked by the COVID-19 crisis has shown that, by working together, institutions in any industry can develop predictive AI models that set a new standard for both accuracy and generalizability.
Published today in Nature Medicine, a leading peer-reviewed healthcare journal, the collaboration demonstrates how privacy-preserving federated learning techniques can enable the creation of robust AI models that work well across organizations, even in industries constrained by confidential or sparse data.
Usually in AI development, when you create an algorithm on one hospital's data, it doesn't work well at any other hospital, said Dr. Ittai Dayan, first author on the study, who led AI development at Mass General Brigham and this year founded healthcare startup Rhino Health.
But by developing our model using federated learning and objective, multimodal data from different continents, we were able to build a generalizable model that can help frontline physicians worldwide, he said.
Other large-scale federated learning projects are already underway in the healthcare industry, including a five-member study for mammogram assessment and pharmaceutical giant Bayer's work training an AI model for spleen segmentation.
Beyond healthcare, federated learning can help energy companies analyze seismic and wellbore data, financial firms improve fraud detection models, and autonomous vehicle researchers develop AI that generalizes to different countries' driving behaviors.
Federated Learning: AI Takes a Village Companies and research institutions developing AI models are typically limited by the data available to them. This can mean that smaller organizations or niche research areas lack enough data to train an accurate predictive model. Even large datasets can be biased by an organization's patient or customer demographics, specific data-recording methods or even the brand of scientific equipment used.
To gather enough training data for a robust, generalizable model, most organizations would need to pool data with their peers. But in many cases, data privacy regulations limit the ability to directly share data - like patient medical records or proprietary datasets - on a common supercomputer or cloud server.
That's where federated learning comes in.
Dubbed EXAM (for EMR CXR AI Model), the new study in Nature Medicine - led by Mass General Brigham and NVIDIA - brought 20 hospitals across five continents together to train a neural network that predicts the level of supplemental oxygen a patient with COVID-19 symptoms may need 24 and 72 hours after arriving to point-of-care settings like the emergency department. It's among the largest, most diverse clinical federated learning studies to date.
Many Hands Make AI Work Federated learning enabled the EXAM collaborators to create an AI model that learned from every participating hospital's chest X-ray images, patient vitals, demographic data and lab values - without ever seeing the private data housed in each location's private server.
Every hospital trained a copy of the same neural network on local NVIDIA GPUs. During training, each hospital periodically sent only updated model weights to a centralized server, where a global version of the neural network aggregated them to form a new global model.
It's like sharing the answer key to an exam without revealing any of the study material used to come up with the answers.
The results of the EXAM initiative show it's possible to train high performing and generalizable AI models in healthcare without private identifiable data exchanging hands, thus upholding data privacy, said Dr. Brad Wood, coauthor and director of the NIH Center for Interventional Oncology and Chief of Interventional Radiology at the NIH Clinical Center.
The findings are impactful well beyond this cross-hospital model for COVID-19 predictions, and showcase federated learning as a promising solution for the field in general, he continued. This provides the framework toward more effective and compliant big data sharing, which may be required to realize the potential of AI deep learning in medicine.
The global EXAM model, shared with all participating sites, resulted in a 16 percent improvement of the AI model's average performance. Researchers saw an average increase of 38 percent in generalizability when compared to models trained at any single site.
Each participating hospital saw improved performance with the global federated learning model (green), compared to the model trained only on local data (blue). Figure originally published in Nature Medicine. The performance boost was especially dramatic for hospitals with smaller datasets, visible in the chart above.
Federated learning allows researchers all over the world to collaborate on a common objective: to develop a model that learns from and generalizes to everyone's data, said Sira Sriswasdi, co-director of the Center for AI in Medicine at Chulalongkorn University and King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital in Thailand, one of the 20 hospitals that collaborated on EXAM. With NVIDIA GPUs and the NVIDIA Clara software, participating in the study was an easy process that yielded impactful results.
Hospitals, Startups Pursue Further EXAMination Bringing together collaborators across North and South America, Europe and Asia, the original EXAM study took just two weeks of training to achieve high-quality prediction of patient oxygen needs, an insight that can help physicians determine the level of care a patient requires.
Since then, its collaborators validated that the AI model may generalize and perform well in settings independent from sites that helped build and train the model. Three additional hospitals in Massachusetts - Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Martha's Vineyard Hospital and Nantucket
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
An effort uniting News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo, the 50+-camera live produc...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia backs audience-led filmmaking with new insight-driven initiativ...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia refines guidelines for Narrative Content Development and Docume...
02/07/2026
Maxon Autograph: Introduction to working with Tables
Simon Ubsdell July 1, 2026
0 Comments
An overview of Autograph's ridiculously powerful tables...
02/07/2026
Boston Conservatory's Soir e Breaks Records to Fund Student Scholarships The event achieved 127 percent of its fundraising goal in an evening celebrating ...
A multi-hospital initiative sparked by the COVID-19 crisis has shown that, by working together, institutions in any industry can develop predictive AI models that set a new standard for both accuracy and generalizability.
