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Completed TRL 5 (started at 5, targeting 8)
The current medical inventory paradigm on the International Space Station (ISS) requires crew to report use of medications and supplies to be manually decremented by ground teams. This method is not only tedious and time consuming for both the crew and ground teams but also results in inaccuracies in location and availability of medical supplies over time. Fortunately, the ISS is frequently resupplied by cargo launches and crew expeditions, and an accurate inventory count is less critical. However, for exploration missions, resupply will be greatly limited or unavailable entirely, and increasing communication latency will impair crew-ground communications. On longer missions, with large medical systems and time constrained crew, NASA needs a method of accurately managing medical inventory without reliance on ground teams and with as little crew time and effort as possible.
The Exploration Medical Integrated Product Team (XMIPT) project called Medical Exploration Development and Implementation Scoping (MEDIScope) prepared a concept of operations and preliminary requirements for an Automated Medical Inventory System (AMIS) and completed a market survey and trade study of potential inventory management technologies in partnership with the market research firm, yet2. The products from the MEDIScope effort, including the market survey results, preliminary functional requirements and a concept of operations, were handed off to a development team at Glenn Research Center (GRC) and ZIN Technologies for technology maturation. The AMIS team completed a system-level requirements review in February 2024 and delivered a set of engineering level requirements leveraging lessons learned from a previous Medical Consumables Tracking (MCT) project developed under the Human Research Program which focused specifically on pharmaceutical dose tracking.
An AMIS would reduce the manual effort associated with ground and in-flight medical inventory, increase accuracy of inventory reporting, and help ensure crew can locate items efficiently for quick use in medical situations. Planned integration with the Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data Architecture (CHP-IDA) can inform tools such as clinical decision support to direct medication and medical supply usage efficiently thus conserving limited resources.
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