Creating a general-purpose generative model for healthcare data based on multiple clinical studies
Data for healthcare applications are typically customized for specific purposes but are often difficult to access due to high costs and privacy concerns. Rather than prepare separate datasets for individual applications, we propose a novel approach: building a general-purpose generative model applicable to virtually any type of healthcare application. This generative model encompasses a broad range of human attributes, including age, sex, anthropometric measurements, blood components, physical performance metrics, and numerous healthcare-related questionnaire responses. To achieve this goal, we integrated the results of multiple clinical studies into a unified training dataset and developed a generative model to replicate its characteristics. The model can estimate missing attribute values from known attribute values and generate synthetic datasets for various applications. Our analysis confirmed that the model captures key statistical properties of the training dataset, including univariate distributions and bivariate relationships. We demonstrate the model's practical utility through multiple real-world applications, illustrating its potential impact on predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine.
Authors
- Kenta Oono (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2133-5232)
- Masashi Yoshikawa
- Masanobu Hibi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6791-3662)
- Hideyoshi Igata (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8342-0614)
- Kotatsu Bito (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3197-7880)
- Hiroshi Maruyama (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6597-0436)
- Shun Katada (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3241-4470)
- Nontawat Charoenphakdee (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0214-4943)
- Zhengyan Gao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0787-4979)
- Kei Akita
- Aya Kawakami (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2703-6241)
- Yoshiaki Ota (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4443-8365)
- Shin‐ichi Maeda (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3254-9722)
- Shoichiro Yamaguchi
- Yuki Saito
- Yohei Sugawara
- Hiroki Okui
Institutions
- Kao Corporation (Japan) (JP)
- Preferred Networks (Japan) (JP)
- The University of Tokyo (JP)
- Chuo University (JP)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PLOS Digital Health
- Published
- 2025-11-05
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0001059
- Primary Topic
- Machine Learning in Healthcare
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00