Core Insights - As human-spaceflight missions extend in duration and distance, maintaining astronaut health becomes increasingly complex [1] - NASA is working towards making on-orbit medical care more independent from Earth, with a focus on developing an AI medical assistant in collaboration with Google [2] Group 1: AI Medical Assistant Development - The AI tool, named Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA), aims to assist astronauts in diagnosing and treating medical issues when communication with Earth is unavailable [2] - CMO-DA operates under a fixed-price agreement with Google, which includes cloud services and application development, while NASA retains ownership of the source code [3] - Initial evaluations of CMO-DA showed high diagnostic accuracy: 74% for flank pain, 80% for ear pain, and 88% for ankle injury [4] Group 2: Future Enhancements and Applications - NASA plans to incrementally enhance the AI tool by integrating more data sources and training it to be aware of space-specific medical conditions [7] - There is potential for the AI medical assistant to be validated for use in terrestrial healthcare settings, although regulatory clearance details remain unclear [8] - Insights gained from the CMO-DA project could have broader implications for health applications beyond space missions [9]