Out-of-this-world medical tech could boost health care on Earth, researchers say

The ear thermometer. Portable ultrasounds that plug into an iPhone. A virtual doctor's appointment.

All of these now-common medical tools were adapted from space technology.

Now, deep space exploration is set to bring new innovations to health-care systems on Earth, researchers say, including portable medical technology and robotic care.

And these developments could be particularly beneficial for remote and under-resourced communities.

"The lessons that we can learn from a lunar habitat for delivering remote medical care [are], in a similar manner, transferrable to northern Canada," said Dr. Dave Williams, a former emergency room doctor and astronaut based in Toronto.

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Williams and Dr. Farhan Asrar, an associate dean at Toronto Metropolitan University's school of medicine, are studying potential health-care innovations related to deep-space exploration — missions that are sending people back to the Moon, and eventually, to Mars.

Deep-space missions will make it harder for astronauts to return to Earth for medical care, according to Dr. Tarek Sardana, president of the Canadian Society of Aerospace Medicine.

"If they do have to come back, it's going to be days, weeks or months — if that's even an option," he said.

As missions get longer and farther away, they will push communications technology to be faster to allow virtual care, say Williams and Asrar. It will also require more robot- and AI-supported care, because the 20 minutes it would take for a doctor's message from Earth to reach an astronaut on Mars would be too long to provide timely health care, Williams said.

It could also advance the development of more wearable technology that monitors vital signs, robotic limbs and exoskeletons that could support people at risk of falling or those with disabilities.

Space medicine and terrestrial medicine have a "yin-yang relationship" — innovations in one field drive new developments in the other and vice versa, Williams said.

Bags of large, heavy equipment can't be taken to space, so portable medical technology will be even more necessary as humans stay in space longer, Asrar said. Back on Earth, lighter, more adaptable tools could help physicians in remote communities and areas hit by disasters, he said.

Doctors have to make "difficult choices" about the medicines and tools they bring to remote communities, according to astronaut David Saint-Jacques, a former family doctor in Puvirnituq, an Inuit community in northern Quebec.

Limited resources, small medical teams and the distance and cost of travel sometimes "drives a different standard of care" in those communities, Saint-Jacques said. For example, a person snowmobiling in the winter or a person set to give birth would know an air ambulance may not be able to arrive in time if something went wrong, he said.

But it's not just Northern communities.

"An elderly person so frail that they can't really leave their apartment easily, even if they're downtown — they're super isolated," Saint-Jacques said.

Both cases are a lot like being on a spaceship, he said.

While space medical technology innovations are beneficial on Earth, Saint-Jacques said he thinks it's a "two-way street," because new tools or medicines are usually created and tested for Earth before getting onto a rocket.

Organizations like the Canadian Space Agency seriously consider how a proposed technology could be used on Earth when deciding how to allocate funding, Asrar said.

"It might be amazing in space, but if it doesn't have any benefits on Earth, then basically that's not what they're looking for," he said.

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Many innovations in robotics and automated health care are underway, but costs and lengthy regulatory processes mean it can take a while to be implemented on Earth.

For example, Williams said NASA and the CSA developed functional robotic surgery in the early 2000s, but the tech's complexity and price tag means it's still not in most hospitals.

However, the Artemis II mission has "created a lot of buzz" that could boost further, faster innovation, according to Sardana.

He said the success is "throwing gas on the fire" and that it will lead more physicians to seek training in aerospace medicine and more young people to enter the field.