Innovative developments that occur in one type of health domain are capable of being transported successfully to related areas. The horrors of war provide a major impetus for the ability to create and implement fast, effective means of treating battlefield casualties. Skills learned and applied in that arena often prove to be highly welcome in the civilian sector. Similarly, capabilities produced in civilian institutions have proven of immense benefit in the military setting.
Beginning in the 1960s with the Mercury Space Program, astronaut Alan Shepard was the first American to participate in a suborbital flight of short duration. Today, the average amount of time for a team of astronauts to be aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is six months. According to an article published in the February 2022 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, spending that amount of time high above the earth can exert an impressive toll on the human body. Bones lose density and their arteries thicken and stiffen the equivalent of a normal decade of terrestrial aging. Over a six-month period, an astronaut’s internal temperature can rise by one degree Celsius upon being exposed to the equivalent of 375 chest X- rays’ worth of radiation. These space travelers also become more susceptible to kidney stones, allergies, and infectious diseases. Even an astronaut’s height changes in space.
Thus, it has become mandatory to consider how to deal with these kinds of ill effects. Fortunately, there have been some successes. Already, technologies have been developed to help astronauts survive, including telehealth, portable ultrasounds, air purifiers, and gravity-compensating bodysuits, to name a few examples of innovations that have made their way down to terrestrial health care settings. Meanwhile, technology developed to help astronauts conduct basic medicine with limited tools and knowledge already has aided in the delivery of health care to remote places, such as Antarctica, ships at sea, or home care settings, which are hard to access and face a shortage of health care workers and supplies.
The all-civilian, four-person crew of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission in September 2021 tested out the Butterfly iQ, a handheld ultrasound, taking images of their hearts, lungs, and urinary systems without any ground support. That same pocket-sized device already has been deployed in rural communities around the world where X-ray, CT, and MRI machines are at distances many hours away. Other remote monitoring innovations, such as miniature and body-worn scanning devices can collect and track biomedical data
Moving forward, researchers are investigating ways to equip astronauts so they can serve as their own medical providers: monitoring their own health, diagnosing any issues, and treating them with whatever is onboard. Some researchers have focused on how to augment a spacecraft’s stores by using genetically modified plants as chemical factories so that astronauts someday could grow the medicine they need in space. All these advances offer the prospect of enhancing life for more earthbound inhabitants of this planet.