As space missions become increasingly long and far-reaching, keeping astronauts healthy is becoming a major challenge. Unlike the International Space Station where regular medical check-ups and quick support from Houston are available, future missions to the Moon or Mars will require more autonomous medical care.
To address this issue, NASA is collaborating with Google on an AI-powered tool called the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant. The tool is designed to guide astronauts in diagnosing and treating health problems without human doctor supervision. It uses machine learning algorithms that run on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, utilizing speech, text, and images to provide diagnoses and care.
The tool has been tested on three medical issues: ankle injury, flank pain, and ear pain. The results showed accuracy scores ranging from 74% to 88%, with NASA planning to improve the system by incorporating data from medical devices and training it to recognize microgravity-related health problems.
While the app’s ownership lies with NASA, Google provides the cloud services and training tools. Although its future use on Earth is uncertain, experts believe that the technology learned in space could one day improve healthcare on ground as well.
Source: https://www.tipranks.com/news/google-googl-and-nasa-team-up-to-develop-ai-tool-to-keep-astronauts-healthy