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dsSurvival: Privacy preserving survival models for federated individual patient meta-analysis in DataSHIELD.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Sofack, Ghislain N 
Papakonstantinou, Thodoris 
Avraam, Demetris 
Burton, Paul 

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Achieving sufficient statistical power in a survival analysis usually requires large amounts of data from different sites. Sensitivity of individual-level data, ethical and practical considerations regarding data sharing across institutions could be a potential challenge for achieving this added power. Hence we implemented a federated meta-analysis approach of survival models in DataSHIELD, where only anonymous aggregated data are shared across institutions, while simultaneously allowing for exploratory, interactive modelling. In this case, meta-analysis techniques to combine analysis results from each site are a solution, but an analytic workflow involving local analysis undertaken at individual studies hinders exploration. Thus, the aim is to provide a framework for performing meta-analysis of Cox regression models across institutions without manual analysis steps for the data providers. RESULTS: We introduce a package (dsSurvival) which allows privacy preserving meta-analysis of survival models, including the calculation of hazard ratios. Our tool can be of great use in biomedical research where there is a need for building survival models and there are privacy concerns about sharing data.

Description

Keywords

Federated analysis, Meta-analysis, Survival analysis, Biomedical Research, Humans, Information Dissemination, Privacy

Journal Title

BMC Res Notes

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1756-0500
1756-0500

Volume Title

15

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
European Commission Horizon 2020 (H2020) Societal Challenges (824989)