DISCO-TAB: A Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Framework for Privacy-Preserving Synthesis of Complex Clinical Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ilaty, Arshia, Shirazi, Hossein, Rahmani, Amir, Homayouni, Hajar
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Ilaty, Arshia
Shirazi, Hossein
Rahmani, Amir
Homayouni, Hajar
author_facet Ilaty, Arshia
Shirazi, Hossein
Rahmani, Amir
Homayouni, Hajar
contents The development of robust clinical decision support systems is frequently impeded by the scarcity of high-fidelity, privacy-preserving biomedical data. While Generative Large Language Models (LLMs) offer a promising avenue for synthetic data generation, they often struggle to capture the complex, non-linear dependencies and severe class imbalances inherent in Electronic Health Records (EHR), leading to statistically plausible but clinically invalid records. To bridge this gap, we introduce DISCO-TAB (DIScriminator-guided COntrol for TABular synthesis), a novel framework that orchestrates a fine-tuned LLM with a multi-objective discriminator system optimized via Reinforcement Learning. Unlike prior methods relying on scalar feedback, DISCO-TAB evaluates synthesis at four granularities, token, sentence, feature, and row, while integrating Automated Constraint Discovery and Inverse-Frequency Reward Shaping to autonomously preserve latent medical logic and resolve minority-class collapse. We rigorously validate our framework across diverse benchmarks, including high-dimensional, small-sample medical datasets (e.g., Heart Failure, Parkinson's). Our results demonstrate that hierarchical feedback yields state-of-the-art performance, achieving up to 38.2% improvement in downstream clinical classifier utility compared to GAN and Diffusion baselines, while ensuring exceptional statistical fidelity (JSD < 0.01) and robust resistance to membership inference attacks. This work establishes a new standard for generating trustworthy, utility-preserving synthetic tabular data for sensitive healthcare applications.
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publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DISCO-TAB: A Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Framework for Privacy-Preserving Synthesis of Complex Clinical Data
Ilaty, Arshia
Shirazi, Hossein
Rahmani, Amir
Homayouni, Hajar
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
The development of robust clinical decision support systems is frequently impeded by the scarcity of high-fidelity, privacy-preserving biomedical data. While Generative Large Language Models (LLMs) offer a promising avenue for synthetic data generation, they often struggle to capture the complex, non-linear dependencies and severe class imbalances inherent in Electronic Health Records (EHR), leading to statistically plausible but clinically invalid records. To bridge this gap, we introduce DISCO-TAB (DIScriminator-guided COntrol for TABular synthesis), a novel framework that orchestrates a fine-tuned LLM with a multi-objective discriminator system optimized via Reinforcement Learning. Unlike prior methods relying on scalar feedback, DISCO-TAB evaluates synthesis at four granularities, token, sentence, feature, and row, while integrating Automated Constraint Discovery and Inverse-Frequency Reward Shaping to autonomously preserve latent medical logic and resolve minority-class collapse. We rigorously validate our framework across diverse benchmarks, including high-dimensional, small-sample medical datasets (e.g., Heart Failure, Parkinson's). Our results demonstrate that hierarchical feedback yields state-of-the-art performance, achieving up to 38.2% improvement in downstream clinical classifier utility compared to GAN and Diffusion baselines, while ensuring exceptional statistical fidelity (JSD < 0.01) and robust resistance to membership inference attacks. This work establishes a new standard for generating trustworthy, utility-preserving synthetic tabular data for sensitive healthcare applications.
title DISCO-TAB: A Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Framework for Privacy-Preserving Synthesis of Complex Clinical Data
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.01481