Grid multi-category response logistic models

BACKGROUND: Multi-category response models are very important complements to binary logistic models in medical decision-making. Decomposing model construction by aggregating computation developed at different sites is necessary when data cannot be moved outside institutions due to privacy or other concerns. Such decomposition makes it possible to conduct grid computing to protect the privacy of individual observations. METHODS: This paper proposes two grid multi-category response models for ordinal and multinomial logistic regressions. Grid computation to test model assumptions is also developed for these two types of models. In addition, we present grid methods for goodness-of-fit assessment and for classification performance evaluation. RESULTS: Simulation results show that the grid models produce the same results as those obtained from corresponding centralized models, demonstrating that it is possible to build models using multi-center data without losing accuracy or transmitting observation-level data. Two real data sets are used to evaluate the performance of our proposed grid models. CONCLUSIONS: The grid fitting method offers a practical solution for resolving privacy and other issues caused by pooling all data in a central site. The proposed method is applicable for various likelihood estimation problems, including other generalized linear models. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12911-015-0133-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.