ArticlePLOS digital health2023
Synthetic data in health care: A narrative review.
Article in PLOS digital health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 113 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
113 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Natural language generation in healthcare: A review of methods and applications.Journal of biomedical informatics · 2026Pooled it
- Synthetic data generation methods for longitudinal and time series health data: a systematic review.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2025Pooled it
- The Rise of Small Language Models in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Survey.Computer science review · 2026Article
- Synthetic data generation: challenges and perspectives for gastrointestinal medicine.Nature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology · 2026Review
- Ethical Governance of Open Data Across Biomedical Research, Healthcare, and Public Health: Privacy, Equity, Trust, and Controlled Access.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2026Article
- From Invisible to Enrolled: How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Clinical Trial Recruitment.Pharmaceutical medicine · 2026Article
- Guideline-augmented large language models for contraindication screening in interventional spine care.Interventional pain medicine · 2026Article
- Synthetic Medical Data vs. The Four Principles: Ethical Trade-Offs and Zombie Data.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2026Article
- Validating methods for inferring co-occurring diseases: a flexible framework for simulating synthetic data.BMC medical research methodology · 2026Article
- Privacy and Security Throughout the Health Data Life Cycle: From Primary Care to Research Networks.Annual review of biomedical data science · 2026Review
- Large language models for generating longitudinal synthetic data in low-risk pregnancy care.Data in brief · 2026Article
- Addressing the Challenges in Using Synthetic Data for Health Research: Application to Cardiology.JMIR cardio · 2026Review
- Evaluation of the Applicability of Synthetic Data in the Development of Colorectal Cancer Survival Prediction Models: External Validation of Advanced Machine Learning Models Based on National Cancer Data Center Data.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Evaluating the quality of tabular synthetic data in health care.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- A Scoping Review of Synthetic Data Generation by Language Models in Biomedical Research and Application: Data Utility and Quality Perspectives.Journal of healthcare informatics research · 2026Review
- Generating Brain MRI with StyleGAN2-ADA: The Effect of the Training Set Size on the Quality of Synthetic Images.Journal of imaging informatics in medicine · 2026Article
- Detecting changepoints in dynamical systems: Modeling time-varying transmission of seasonal influenza.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Rethinking Trust in Synthetic Health Data: Lessons From 7 European Research Initiatives.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- A case study comparing anonymized and synthetic health insurance claims data for medication safety assessments.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- A simulation-based methodological analysis of caesarean-section patterns in women of reproductive age in Saudi Arabia.Scientific reports · 2026Article
53 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Data are central to research, public health, and in developing health information technology (IT) systems. Nevertheless, access to most data in health care is tightly controlled, which may limit innovation, development, and efficient implementation of new research, products, services, or systems. Using synthetic data is one of the many innovative ways that can allow organizations to share datasets with broader users. However, only a limited set of literature is available that explores its potentials and applications in health care. In this review paper, we examined existing literature to bridge the gap and highlight the utility of synthetic data in health care. We searched PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar to identify peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, reports, and thesis/dissertations articles related to the generation and use of synthetic datasets in health care. The review identified seven use cases of synthetic data in health care: a) simulation and prediction research, b) hypothesis, methods, and algorithm testing, c) epidemiology/public health research, d) health IT development, e) education and training, f) public release of datasets, and g) linking data. The review also identified readily and publicly accessible health care datasets, databases, and sandboxes containing synthetic data with varying degrees of utility for research, education, and software development. The review provided evidence that synthetic data are helpful in different aspects of health care and research. While the original real data remains the preferred choice, synthetic data hold possibilities in bridging data access gaps in research and evidence-based policymaking.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.