Who's Who at NASA

NASA Tech Briefs, Jul 2006

Dr. Jeff Jones, Lead for Exploration Medical Operations, NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

At remote sites, the International Space Station (ISS), or missions to the Moon or Mars, illness and injury can be extremely serious. Far from hospitals, scientists and astronauts may find themselves dealing with medical situations for which they have no training. Telemedidne enables doctors and technicians to talk personnel through complex procedures and provide the care needed, via radio or satellite. Dr. Jeff Jones leads NASA's telemedicine program, developed for a number of remote NASA projects, to administer medical care over long distances.

NASA Tech Briefs: What is telemedicine?

Dr. Jeff Jones: It is a way of broadcasting medical expertise, whether by audio, video, or a combination of media, to virtually put the physician in a remote location to provide care.

NTB: What sort of technology is used?

Dr. Jones: A variety of things now are coming into play for telemedicine. Initially, early in the space program, it began with audio. It has since expanded from just equipment like electrocardiograms and other sensors - blood pressure, CO2, etc. - to include video as well as audio.

And now, imaging is coming online. We're seeing ultrasound and X-rays being broadcast in the telemedicine route, so that images are taken ahead of time and transmitted through a stillimage link, or even broadcast in real-time. We are now able to direct surgical procedures, even robotic control, from several hundred miles away. I think we have proven that with real-time direction and real-time mentoring, the individuals can be directed to acquire very high-quality diagnostic images even if they were not experts in operating that equipment.

Of course, there are occasions when real-time transmission is not practical. We may have limitations in the bandwidth, or problems with communications. In those conditions, we employ a store-and-forward approach. Individuals at the remote site acquire information, store it electronically, put it into a queue, and when communication is possible, bring that information to Mission Control for analysis and recommendations.

NTB: What NASA projects use telemedicine, or would use it?

Dr. Jones: We're conducting telemedicine in a number of our analog projects. With the Mars project at the Haughton meteor crater, on Devon Island in northern Canada, we're doing analog work at a very lunar- and Mars-like location. We've done so also for space shuttle missions, on the ISS, rural communities. Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica, on the sea floor in the NEEMO project, and out on ships in the middle of the ocean.

NTB: How much of telemedicine is preventative?

Dr. Jones: Quite a bit. Our chief philosophy in space medicine is to prevent problems before they become something we have to treat in orbit. We do routine monitoring. Every week we have a private medical conference with the crews on the space station. None of those is in response to a clinical event.

Terrestrial telemedicine typically is focused on what we call "tertiary prevention," directed at addressing existing medical conditions, Currently, the difference between the applications of telemedicine is resource limitation. Obviously, if we could be as aggressive in terrestrial practice at preventing disease as we are in space telemedicine, everybody would like to see that.

A full transcript of this interview appears online at www.techbriefs.com/whoswho. Contact Dr. Jeff Jones at Jeffrey. A. Jones@ nasa.gov.