Augmented Reality to Enhance Crew Medical Training

Due to the large and diverse set of possible medical conditions, crew medical training focuses on the most likely medical scenarios that may occur in the current mission profiles, with less emphasis on rarer, or unforeseen health related events. The need for good training and the access to large amounts of documentation areconditions making the use of Augmented Reality (AR) techniques most promising.

  One of NASA's strategic goals is to extend and sustain human activities across the solar system. With time delays and potentially sparse communications back to Earth, astronauts may have to perform life-saving surgery without support from the Earth based flight control team. Medical crew training is a complex and labor-intensive process. Due to the large and diverse set of possible medical conditions, crew medical training focuses on the most likely medical scenarios that may occur in the current mission profiles, with less emphasis on rarer, or unforeseen health related events. The need for good training and the access to large amounts of documentation areconditions making the use of Augmented Reality (AR) techniques most promising. Also, the use of medical AR for crew training could enhance effectiveness, and expand the repertoire of available on-mission aids while minimizing resource utilization saving time, money and potentially improving outcomes.