NASA's New AI Medical Assistant for Space Missions

NASA, in collaboration with Google, is developing a new medical assistant prototype powered by artificial intelligence — the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA). This innovative tool aims to provide autonomous diagnosis and treatment for various medical symptoms while in space, particularly when communication with Earth is compromised or there is no doctor on board.

According to PCMag.

CMO-DA operates within Google Cloud's Vertex AI environment, supporting multimodal interactions through voice, text, and images. NASA retains control over the assistant's source code and is actively involved in fine-tuning its models. The platform offers access to models from Google and third-party developers.

The system has already been tested in three scenarios: ear pain, side pain, and ankle injury. All cases were evaluated by doctors, including an astronaut. The diagnostic accuracy ranged from 74% to 88% depending on the scenario.

This project is being carried out under a fixed contract with Google Public Sector, which covers cloud services, development infrastructure, and model training. In the future, NASA plans to incorporate additional data sources, including medical devices, and adapt the model for microgravity conditions.

CMO-DA is part of NASA's strategy to move towards autonomous medicine in space. If validated successfully in orbit, this technology could also be adapted for use on Earth, particularly in isolated areas or where access to medical services is limited.

Recently, NASA also shared insights on how it has maintained the operation of the Curiosity rover for 13 years.