NASA teams up with Google to build AI healthcare support for deep space explorers

NASA and Google are working together to develop an AI-powered medical assistant designed to support astronaut health on long-duration missions to Mars. As humans travel farther from Earth, real-time communication and swift medical resupply become impractical, prompting NASA to invest in autonomous healthcare tools for space crews. Their joint effort centers around the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA), a system capable of diagnosing and guiding treatment of medical issues without direct access to Earth-based physicians. This multi-modal assistant leverages speech, text, and image data and runs on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform. By using machine learning and natural language processing, CMO-DA can interpret reported symptoms and spaceflight-specific data, offering astronauts trusted clinical recommendations. Early testing has shown promising diagnostic accuracy across various scenarios, such as managing pain or responding to injuries, with medical experts evaluating the system’s effectiveness. The project’s development is gradual and builds on medical literature and expert feedback. NASA plans to eventually integrate more data sources, like real-time readings from medical devices, and adapt the AI to the unique conditions astronauts face in space, such as microgravity. Beyond supporting future lunar and Martian expeditions, this initiative also holds promise for bringing advanced medical care to remote locations on Earth where professional help may be limited