Google and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have joined hands to build AI-powered medical assistance to medically support astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space.
The project aims to help astronauts with medical issues they face when operating beyond low Earth orbit and on Mars and Moon missions, where communication delays with Earth make real-time consultations next to impossible.
The pilot assistant named as a Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistance (CMO-DA) is a type of Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) and expected to revolutionize human spaceflight with its Artemis program.
This multimodal tool, running on Google’s Cloud’s Vertex AI, handles text, speech, and images with trials showing 88 percent diagnostic accuracy.
Google representative issued a statement, “This digital assistant is trained on spaceflight literature, the AI system uses cutting-edge natural language processing and machine learning techniques to safely provide real-time analyses of crew health and performance.”
The diagnosis will be based on reported symptoms. However, efforts are underway to further test and improve the model.
Given the occurrence of communication delays during space missions and impossibility of swift return to Earth, the AI tool has become the need of the hour.
The technology could also be used in remote and challenging environments on Earth where access to medical emergencies and facilities is limited.