Clinical data is of great value to any medical study, be it blood test results, brain images or sequencing results – all of which can help gain insights into disease subtypes and create precision treatments that are more effective than the regular therapies.

Sharing this information between research teams at different institutions jointly working on the same questions is important to generate meaningful results, but it must be done carefully to protect the privacy of the study participants and manage the large amounts of information. Systems medicine at the DZNE is addressing this by using a technology called Swarm Learning.

Swarm Learning allows researchers to share algorithms and analysis insights without exchanging individual patient data, keeping personal information private and thereby enabling better research collaborations and translational clinical developments. Swarm Learning offers a safe way of collaboration based on private data that abides by the European ethical principles of medical data access and privacy, fostering transformative potential of medical research in the age of artificial intelligence.