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

TL;DR

DISCO-TAB is a hierarchical reinforcement learning framework that enhances privacy-preserving synthetic clinical data generation by capturing complex dependencies and maintaining data utility and privacy.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-granularity discriminator system with reinforcement learning to improve the realism and utility of synthetic EHR data, surpassing prior methods.

Findings

Achieves up to 38.2% improvement in clinical classifier utility.

Ensures statistical fidelity with JSD < 0.01.

Demonstrates robustness against membership inference attacks.

Abstract

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.