Some of the medical tools people now take for granted started in space. Researchers say deep-space exploration could now drive the next round of health-care technology on Earth, especially for remote and under-resourced communities.

The ear thermometer, portable ultrasounds that plug into an iPhone and virtual doctor’s appointments were all adapted from space technology.

Now researchers studying missions back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars, say deep-space exploration could bring advances including portable medical technology and robotic care.

“The lessons that we can learn from a lunar habitat for delivering remote medical care [are], in a similar manner, transferrable to northern Canada,” said Dr. Dave Williams, a former emergency room doctor and astronaut based in Toronto.

Williams and Dr. Farhan Asrar, an associate dean at Toronto Metropolitan University’s school of medicine, are studying potential health-care innovations tied to deep-space exploration.

Deep-space missions will make it harder for astronauts to return to Earth for medical care, according to Dr. Tarek Sardana, president of the Canadian Society of Aerospace Medicine.

“If they do have to come back, it’s going to be days, weeks or months, if that’s even an option,” he said.

Williams and Asrar say longer missions farther from Earth will push communications technology to be faster so virtual care can work better. Williams said it will also require more robot- and AI-supported care, because the 20 minutes it would take for a doctor’s message from Earth to reach an astronaut on Mars would be too long to provide timely health care.

They say it could also speed up the development of wearable technology that monitors vital signs, robotic limbs and exoskeletons that could support people at risk of falling or those with disabilities.

Williams said space medicine and terrestrial medicine have a “yin-yang relationship,” with each field driving developments in the other.

Asrar said portable medical technology will become even more necessary as humans stay in space longer, because bags of large, heavy equipment cannot be taken to space. He said lighter, more adaptable tools could also help physicians in remote communities and areas hit by disasters on Earth.

Astronaut David Saint-Jacques, a former family doctor in Puvirnituq, an Inuit community in northern Quebec, said doctors have to make “difficult choices” about the medicines and tools they bring to remote communities.

He said limited resources, small medical teams, and the distance and cost of travel sometimes “drives a different standard of care” in those communities.

“For example, a person snowmobiling in the winter or a person set to give birth would know an air ambulance may not be able to arrive in time if something went wrong,” he said.

Saint-Jacques said the problem is not limited to Northern communities.

“An elderly person so frail that they can’t really leave their apartment easily, even if they’re downtown, they’re super isolated,” Saint-Jacques said.

“Both cases are a lot like being on a spaceship,” he said.

Saint-Jacques said it is a “two-way street,” because new tools or medicines are usually created and tested for Earth before getting onto a rocket.

Asrar said organizations like the Canadian Space Agency consider how a proposed technology could be used on Earth when deciding funding.

“It might be amazing in space, but if it doesn’t have any benefits on Earth, then basically that’s not what they’re looking for,” he said.

Many innovations in robotics and automated health care are already underway, but high costs and lengthy regulatory processes mean they can take time to be implemented on Earth.

Williams said NASA and the Canadian Space Agency developed functional robotic surgery in the early 2000s, but the technology’s complexity and price means it is still not in most hospitals.

Sardana said the Artemis II mission has “created a lot of buzz” that could speed up more innovation.

He said the mission’s success is “throwing gas on the fire” and will lead more physicians to seek training in aerospace medicine and more young people to enter the field.

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