NASA and Google are building an AI medical assistant to keep Mars-bound astronauts healthy

Advancements in On-Orbit Medical Care for Astronauts

As human-spaceflight missions grow longer and travel farther from Earth, the challenge of keeping crews healthy becomes more daunting. Astronauts on the International Space Station have relied on real-time calls to Houston, regular cargo deliveries of medicines, and a quick return trip home after six months. However, with plans for longer-duration missions to the moon and Mars on the horizon, NASA is working to make on-orbit medical care more “Earth-independent.”

One such initiative is the development of a proof-of-concept AI medical assistant known as the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA) in collaboration with Google. This tool is designed to assist astronauts in diagnosing and treating symptoms when professional medical help is not readily available or communication with Earth is disrupted. The multimodal tool, incorporating speech, text, and images, operates within Google Cloud’s Vertex AI environment.

Under a fixed-price Google Public Sector subscription agreement, NASA and Google are working together to fine-tune the CMO-DA, with NASA owning the source code. The tool has undergone evaluation in three scenarios – an ankle injury, flank pain, and ear pain – with a team of physicians, including an astronaut, assessing its performance in diagnosis and treatment. The results have shown a high degree of diagnostic accuracy, with the tool performing well in evaluating and treating various conditions.

NASA’s roadmap for the CMO-DA project includes plans to incorporate more data sources, such as medical devices, and train the model to be “situationally aware” for space-specific conditions like microgravity. While the focus is currently on space medicine, there is potential for the tool to be adapted for use in other healthcare settings on Earth.

As the collaboration between NASA and Google progresses, there is speculation about the future regulatory clearance and potential applications of this AI medical assistant beyond space missions. The tool not only has the potential to enhance the health of astronauts in space but could also provide valuable insights for improving healthcare in various other domains.