Discussing the 2015 NASA technology roadmap: Stethoscope or autonomous healthcare technology?

Abstract

Clarifying and elaborating the requirements and recommendations provided by experienced astronauts to enable autonomous healthcare on space exploration missions this paper discusses two versions of NASA Technology Roadmap (Technology Area 6: Human Health, Life Support, and Habitation Systems), namely the version of April 2012 and the one of July 2015. The paper suggests a closer look at both the earlier roadmap version as a result of the NRC/NASA panel discussion held on April 26–27, 2011 at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (Houston, TX) and the later version to be revised in order to refine and reconcile requirements on and concepts for manned space exploration missions. Higher level documents such as the Global Exploration Roadmap [1] by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) and “Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era [Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space]” decadal report [2] by the Aerospace Engineering Board of National Research Council (ASEB/NRC) are driven by a set of goals and supporting objectives that reflect commonality while respecting the priorities each of engineering community, science community, crew, and space medicine community has on space exploration missions. The goals and supporting objectives demonstrate the rich potential for manned space exploration to deliver benefits to people on Earth. Emphasizing the importance of requirements traceability the paper authors in their previous work [3] articulated the particular requirements and recommendations provided by experienced astronauts including some crew members who have an extensive experience in research on the International Space Station (ISS). The requirements and recommendations by experienced astronauts are to develop and validate a PHM-based technology to enable autonomous healthcare on space missions in terms of the paradigm shift from the telemedicine to that of healthcare autonomy. Therefore, crew autonomy with high reliability in terms of two fault tolerance concept and predictive capability becomes a dominant design driver to sustain crew health and performance rather than a requirement by space medicine community to develop a next generation stethoscope for space exploration missions.