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Systematic Review of Privacy Preservation in Federated Learning for Secured Healthcare Applications

Anu Alankamony, Ninisha Nels

Information, 2026

1 citation

Abstract

The quick transition of the healthcare industry to digital during the era of the Internet of Medical Things and Artificial Intelligence has ignited the demand for frameworks for data sharing while retaining safety and patient privacy. Centralized learning models place potentially sensitive patient data at risk of leakage, regulatory violation, and cyber-attacks which undermine receptivity and responsible ownership of big medical data. Federated learning is a novel paradigm that allows patients from various healthcare entities to train machine learning models while maintaining the ability to leverage their data without sharing their direct data. This study proposes a systematic literature review of approaches of privacy-preserving federated learning frameworks in healthcare applications. Following PRISMA guidelines, searches were conducted across Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and ACM Digital Library with predefined query strings, explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria, and quality appraisal procedures. A total of 80 peer-reviewed studies, published from January 2015 to December 2025, were included in this systematic review, which examined cryptographic, architectural and algorithmic methods including differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, and Secure Multi-Party Computation, along with integrations using blockchain to enhance trust and confidence in distributed healthcare systems. The findings indicate a gradual shift towards hybrid…

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