As space missions get longer and travel farther from Earth, keeping astronauts healthy becomes more difficult. On the International Space Station, crews can count on real-time calls to Houston, regular deliveries of medicine, and a quick ride home after six months. But that support won’t be possible on future missions to the Moon or Mars. That’s why NASA is starting to prepare for a future where astronauts need to rely more on themselves for medical care. To help solve this challenge, NASA and Google (GOOGL) are working together on an AI-powered tool called the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant.
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Interestingly, this tool is designed to guide astronauts in diagnosing and treating health problems when no doctor is available or when they can’t contact Earth. It runs on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and uses speech, text, and images to guide the crew with diagnoses and care. Although Google provides the cloud services and training tools, NASA owns the app’s code and helps adjust the AI models to better suit space conditions.
So far, the tool has been tested on three health issues: an ankle injury, flank pain, and ear pain. A team of three doctors, which included an astronaut, judged how well the assistant performed, with accuracy scores ranging from 74% to 88%. NASA plans to improve the system by adding data from medical devices and training it to recognize space-specific health problems, like those caused by microgravity. While it’s unclear if Google will bring this tool to hospitals on Earth, experts believe that the lessons learned in space could one day help improve healthcare on the ground as well.
Is Google Stock a Good Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on GOOGL stock based on 26 Buys and nine Holds assigned in the past three months. Furthermore, the average GOOGL price target of $216.48 per share implies 7.4% upside potential.
