Federated Learning and Internet of Medical Things - Opportunities and Challenges

The recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) have opened new horizons for healthcare technology. AI models, however, rely on large data that must be shared with the centralized entity developing the model. Data sharing leads to privacy preservation and legal issues. Federated Learning (FL) enables the training of AI models on distributed data. Hence, a large amount of IoMT data can be put into use without the need for sharing the data. This paper presents the opportunities offered by FL for privacy preservation in IoMT data. With FL, the complicated dynamics and agreements for data-sharing can be avoided. Furthermore, it describes the use cases of FL in facilitating collaborative efforts to develop AI for COVID-19 diagnosis. Since handling data from multiple sites poses its challenges, the paper also highlights the critical challenges associated with FL developments for IoMT data. Addressing these challenges will lead to gaining maximum benefit from data-driven AI technologies in IoMT.