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 ...
09/10/2026
September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026
New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...
08/10/2026
Modern venues have come a long way since the tinny, echoing audio of the mid 20t...
08/10/2026
ESPN's first Super Bowl production will stream in English and Spanish on Disney+, while the ESPN App carries the full slate of game, ManningCast, studio, an...
08/10/2026
From high-school videoboards to War Eagle Productions, the Opelika native is learning how to lead shows and capture big moments
The future of live sports produ...
08/10/2026
The Television Academy and Prime Video have announced a six-year agreement making Prime Video the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards beginning with the 20...
08/10/2026
Techex will exhibit at NAB Show New York 2026 (Booth 623, Javits Center, October...
08/10/2026
X Games has announced the appointment of Steve Rogers as Chief Operating Officer. Rogers previously served as COO of World Supercross and spent nearly a decade ...
08/10/2026
Fonn Group has appointed Trevor Spielmann as Sales Director for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Spielmann joins from EVS, where he held sales and business de...
08/10/2026
The flagship program will originate from major PG events with a four-camera production, live distribution across PGTV, social platforms
Perfect Game is bringin...
08/10/2026
Innovation rarely happens in a vacuum. More often, it happens at the point of collision: when worlds that have run on separate tracks begin to converge. That is...
08/10/2026
For decades, the production and broadcast services business has run on a familia...
08/10/2026
Uplynk, Zixi, BroadView Software, and Grass Valley have published The IP Converg...
08/10/2026
The NFL has announced the return of the Big Data Bowl, the league's analytics competition, now in its ninth year and again powered by AWS. Registration is o...
08/10/2026
Eutelsat has renewed its partnership with T l diffusion d'Alg rie (TDA), Algeria's national broadcasting network operator, for continued distribution of...
08/10/2026
Disney will livestream Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, alongside the game's broadcast on ESPN and ABC. All Disney subscribers in the United States wi...
08/10/2026
RHStv and Red House Streaming have announced an expansion of their partnership w...
08/10/2026
Gray Media has announced a distribution agreement with TEGNA and DAZN to simulca...
08/10/2026
SVG readers can save 10% on registration and receive a complimentary Solutions H...
08/10/2026
PROTON Camera Innovations GmbH has been named a recipient of a 2026 Technology a...
08/10/2026
Industry leaders discuss real-world cloud workflows for live game production, pl...
08/10/2026
The next-gen audio technology joins Dolby Vision as part of Apple TV's immersive F1 experience...
08/10/2026
David France, Jesse Short Bull, Mato Wayuhi, N. Bird Runningwater, Jodi Archambau, Jhane Myers, Paul McGuire, Amber Morning Star Byars, Holly Macarro, Nick Tils...
08/10/2026
Dynamic panning plug-ins get an upgrade
Sound Particles have just announced major updates for two of their popular dynamic panning plug-ins. Energy Panner 2...
08/10/2026
New expandable instrument boasts full DMNO engine
UDO Audio have just announced the upcoming release of a new, expandable synth that packs the power of the ...
08/10/2026
Two new subwoofers added to monitoring line-up
ADAM Audio's monitoring range has just been expanded with two new DSP-equipped subwoofers, the Sub8 PRO a...
08/10/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
08/10/2026
Calrec gives broadcasters freedom of choice at NAB Show New York We're looking forward to meeting up with you all at NAB New York on 21st-22nd October.
Cal...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Globecast, a leading provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, will showcase its next generation of media orchestration services at NAB S...
08/10/2026
Clear-Com played a critical role in the production communications infrastructure for Rock in Rio 2026, one of the world's largest and most recognized music...
08/10/2026
Sohonet Launches ClearView Rush: A Leap Forward in Studio Review, Built for Crea...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Ikegami announces a major expansion to its range of broadcast-quality live production cameras. Scheduled for introduction on Ikegami booth 708 at NAB New York, ...
08/10/2026
Calrec will be located at Booth 444.
Freedom to choose
The media landscape is evolving quickly, and the broadcasters best placed for what comes next will be...
08/10/2026
LiveU has announced that CRD Audiovisuel relied on LiveUs LU900Q intelligent production unit, with built-in native LiveU IQ (LIQ ) connectivity, to deliver live...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Marshall Electronics, a globally recognized provider of high-performance video solutions for broadcast, streaming, AV and professional production, will exhibit ...
08/10/2026
14-hour package also includes A Remarkable Place to Die season 2 as well as libr...
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.
