Functional Graph Convolutional Networks: A Unified Multi-task and Multi-modal Learning Framework to Facilitate Health and Social-Care Insights

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel Functional Graph Convolutional Network (funGCN) framework that combines Functional Data Analysis and Graph Convolutional Networks to address the complexities of multi-task and multi-modal learning in digital health and longitudinal studies. With the growing importance of health solutions to improve health care and social support, ensure healthy lives, and promote well-being at all ages, funGCN offers a unified approach to handle multivariate longitudinal data for multiple entities and ensures interpretability even with small sample sizes. Key innovations include task-specific embedding components that manage different data types, the ability to perform classification, regression, and forecasting, and the creation of a knowledge graph for insightful data interpretation. The efficacy of funGCN is validated through simulation experiments and a real-data application. funGCN source code is publicly available at https://github.com/IBM/funGCN.