CARS Preview 2018

Digital Space Medicine 14 CARS 2018 Preview “ Support the persons by a workflow management system and decision-support systems. ” Cypko’s current interest is in digital space medicine. For him, digital space medicine is a vision of the research that needs to occur in order to enable deeper space exploration. Currently space agencies have astronauts at the International Space Station . These astronauts are close to Earth, with a direct connection without delay. If something serious happens and personnel need advanced medical attention, astronauts can escape using a capsule and bring the patients to Earth. However, it is a different situation for astronauts that go to the moon or further, since there is a delay in communications which is short for telemedicine but too long for applying tele-manipulation (such like tele- surgery). Moreover, it is much more difficult to get a patient who needs medical attention back to Earth. From the International Space Station it takes hours, from the moon it takes days. Cypko embellishes: “ If you think about Mars for example, which at the moment is a vision for all of the major space agencies, then it takes months to rescue a person, and we have a communication delay of about half an hour, so they are on their own. If something happens, the personnel need to do surgery to be able to keep the person in good condition to bring them back to Earth. ” Cypko contributes to ensure the astronaut's health and safety throughout the entire mission. Currently, space agencies are focused on having medical experts on the spaceflights to Mars. Certain astronauts may be experts who are well-trained in scientific as well as technical skills, but who also have been trained in medicine. Other experts in this field suggest there should at least be a general physician on board with general knowledge of medicine, so if astronauts needed specialist medical advice for an operation, for example, this advice would not be available in this model. Cypko asserts, “ As you don’t have the experts, one possibility would be to support the persons by a workflow management system and decision- support systems, which are able to Mario A. Cypko is a Research Fellow at the European Space Agency (ESA). Cypko works as a biomedical data analyst in the human research office.