Outlook Business Desk
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is partnering with Google to create an AI-powered medical assistant called the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA). It helps astronauts diagnose and treat medical issues independently when no doctor is onboard and communication with Earth is delayed or limited.
As missions extend beyond the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts face significant medical risks because of communication delays with Earth, limited opportunities for resupply, and possible delays in a quick return to Earth. This makes medical self-reliance vital to ensure crew safety during long-duration spaceflights.
Unlike missions aboard the (ISS), future deep-space expeditions will require astronauts to handle medical issues independently, as they won’t have immediate access to doctors in Space, on Earth, or regular deliveries of medical supplies.
The assistant uses voice, text and image inputs to collect medical data from astronauts, to provide an interactive and flexible tool adaptable to various medical scenarios during space missions.
The tool will run on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, using cloud infrastructure for building and training AI models. NASA owns the app’s source code and actively helps fine-tune the AI. The platform integrates models from Google as well as third-party providers.
The project also tested the assistant on three cases including ankle injury, flank pain and ear pain. A panel of two doctors and an astronaut evaluated its diagnostic accuracy, history taking, clinical reasoning and treatment plans. It achieved accuracies of 88%, 74% and 80%, respectively, showing strong potential for autonomous medical support in Space.
NASA aims to incorporate data from medical devices and improve the AI’s understanding of space-specific factors like microgravity's effects on human body, enabling it to give more precise and relevant medical guidance in future updates.
While designed for astronauts, the AI assistant could benefit Earth’s remote or underserved areas, offering enhanced healthcare access where medical expertise and resources are scarce.
Insights from developing this AI tool will improve medical diagnostics and help advance AI-driven healthcare solutions both in space exploration and everyday medical care on Earth.