Lunar Medical

Lunar Medical is solving the challenges of providing medical support in spaceflight.

MiscellaneousMedical SupportHealth

Created: 2022-12-20

Updated: 2024-02-25

Classification

Miscellaneous

Category

Medical Support
Health

Status

Development

First launch

Not announced

Developing autonomous medical support capabilities for spaceflight takes advantage of recent advances in biomedical technology, Artificial Intelligence, precision medicine, and bio-sensing. Technological innovations developed for spaceflight have a long history of benefitting society back on Earth.

Lunar Medical is committed to bringing the benefits of spaceflight medical solutions to people everywhere. We believe in a future where the best medical care is available to everyone, everywhere, any time.

LMI was born out of a research program that looked at the medical challenges faced by humans in extreme environments. NASA and Canadian Space Agency funded work by LMI’s leads have included work on psychological stressors in Antarctic over-winter personnel, and telemedical support simulations conducted at Devon Island’s Haughton Mars Project Research Station (HMPRS), the NASA-CSA-DLR In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) expedition on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and at the Eureka Weather Station on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.  These remote locations serve as Space-Analogue Environments, and replicate some of the remote and harsh conditions of spaceflight.

Advanced Crew Medical System (ACMS)

In 2016, Lunar Medical completed the detailed design of a prototype Advanced Crew Medical System (ACMS) for the Canadian Space Agency. ACMS is an ambitious comprehensive medical support system for spaceflight. This project was led by LMI with the help of a consortium of  Subject Matter Experts and industrial subcontractors MDA of Brampton, Ontario and GlobVision of Montreal, Quebec.

The ACMS will support all medical care for a crew aboard a long duration spaceflight mission to destinations to the moon, Mars and beyond. Planned missions to the lunar surface, and even farther destinations such as asteroids and Mars, ose unique medical challenges. Return to Earth will take weeks or months, and in the case of Mars an early return home in the event of illness may simply not be an option. Crews will be required to monitor and maintain health through the mission, and they treat sickness and injury millions of kilometers from home, at times with minimal or significantly time-delayed communications with Earth; the ACMS is designed to help them do just that. 
​

Synthetic Intelligence for Medical Assessment and Treatment (SIMAT)

This project, funded under the Canadian Space Agency's Space Technology Development Program (STDP),  laid the foundation for a synthetic cognitive decision support system for medical diagnostics during spaceflight, and will involve an initial validation of that system. The Synthetic Intelligence for Medical Assessment and Treatment (SIMAT) will simulate human cognitive diagnosis through the application of decision algorithms, statistical analysis, pattern recognition, and machine learning.

Fully developed, SIMAT will assist Crew Medical Officers in analyzing an ailing crewmember’s medical symptoms and forming diagnoses. This technology will be critical for future long duration, exploration-class missions where communication with the Earth is delayed due to the vast distances involved. It will also support medical operations when communication with Mission Control is interrupted, or in circumstances where a medically trained astronaut is unavailable or unable to respond.