Hierarchical Continual Learning for Domain-Knowledge Retention in Healthcare Federated Learning

Abstract

Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) applications encounter issues with data protection, continual adaptation, and domain-specific knowledge retention, especially in consumer-centric IoMT scenarios. We overcome these obstacles and facilitate effective knowledge retention and task adaptation in IoMT applications. This study attempts to create a unique privacy-preserving federated learning framework that combines a hierarchical learning structure with Continual Learning (CL). Despite the advancements in Federated Learning (FL), current models have trouble integrating changing datasets in real-time while protecting privacy, as well as catastrophic forgetting, which occurs when previously learned knowledge is lost when adjusting to new tasks. We present a hierarchical learning framework that makes use of three levels of models - Junior Model (JM), Consultant Model (CM), and Senior Consultant Model (SCM) - to overcome these drawbacks. Each level of the model aids in archived retention and domain-knowledge adaptation. To guarantee that the model maintains valuable information over time and adapts to new tasks with ease, our method blends domain adaptation strategies with ongoing learning approaches like knowledge distillation and elastic weight consolidation (EWC). We compare the suggested methodology with current state-of-the-art (SOTA) models on healthcare datasets for tasks like illness diagnosis and medical image categorization. According to our findings, the hierarchical continual learning model performs better than SOTA techniques in terms of accuracy, task adaptability, and privacy protection. In the healthcare industry, our study sets a new standard for privacy-preserving, continuously adaptable federated learning systems, allowing for real-time, scalable IoMT applications that can adapt dynamically to a variety of changing datasets.