NASA, in collaboration with Google, is developing an advanced medical assistant powered by artificial intelligence — the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA). This system is designed for autonomous diagnosis and treatment of medical issues in space, especially when communication with Earth is compromised or when a doctor is unavailable.

This is reported by PCMag.

The CMO-DA operates within the Google Cloud's Vertex AI environment and supports multimodal interaction — voice, text, and images. NASA retains control over the assistant's source code and is involved in customizing the models. The platform provides access to both Google models and third-party developers' solutions.

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. Diagnostic accuracy ranged from 74% to 88% depending on the scenario.

This project is being executed under a fixed contract with Google Public Sector, which encompasses cloud services, development infrastructure, and model training. In the future, NASA plans to integrate additional data sources, such as medical devices, and adapt the model for microgravity conditions.

The CMO-DA is part of NASA's strategy for gradually shifting towards autonomous medicine in space. If successfully validated in orbit, the technology could also be adapted for use on Earth — particularly in isolated regions or under conditions of limited access to medical services.

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