NASA and Google develop AI medical assistant for future Mars missions

NASA has partnered with Google in the development of a new artificial intelligence tool that will assist with ensuring astronauts remain healthy on long-duration space missions. With human spaceflight beyond the International Space Station to the Moon and Mars, medical care is more difficult to provide. Astronauts will not be able to get a quick response from a doctor on the Earth, frequent deliveries of medicine, and a simple way of returning home in case of emergencies.

To meet this challenge NASA is working in collaboration with Google to develop the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA). The AI-based system will be able to diagnose and recommend treatments in a situation when there is no doctor available or when the communication with the Earth is slow. The tool runs on the Google Cloud Vertex AI platform and utilises speech, text and images to take astronauts through medical problems in real time.

CMO-DA has been piloted in three areas, which include ankle injury, flank pain, and ear pain. Its performance was judged by a group of three physicians who included an astronaut. Findings depicted good diagnostic sensitivity 88 percent in ankle injuries, 80 percent in ear pains and 74 percent in flank pains. NASA is also considering expanding the capabilities of the system to include data collected by medical devices and training it to detect some of the conditions that are unique to the space environment (including microgravity effects).

Though it will be used mostly in space missions, the AI assistant may be applicable even on Earth. What we learn in space testing can find application in remote or underserved populations where healthcare professionals are few. It is not clear whether Google intends on pursuing regulatory approval to expand its use, but analysts believe it would be a logical next step should the technology work well in space.