Individualized Behavioral Health Monitoring Tool

Given the extended duration of future missions and the isolated, extreme and confined environments, there is the possibility that behavioral conditions and mental disorders (DSM-IV-TR) will develop. The overarching goal of this project is to deliver an Individualized Behavioral Health Monitoring Tool that unobtrusively integrates all available behavioral measures collected during a mission to provide a dashboard of behavioral health indicators. These indicators will be placed within the context of quantitatively-tracked mission stressors to provide meaningful feedback to astronauts, and possibly the Operational Psychology Group and Flight Surgeons responsible for behavioral health support. The result of this project through Phase II will be a system prototype that can be deployed in space analog environments for validation testing and ultimately deployed on ISS and lunar missions. The critical need for an Individualized Behavioral Health Monitoring Tool has been identified as a priority outlined in the BHP Integrated Research Plan (July 2009) gap BMED3. During Phase I, we will perform an assessment of behavioral health monitoring technologies and develop an engineering requirements document and detailed technical plans to implement during Phase II (Phase I TRL of 3).

The Individualized Behavioral Health Monitoring Tool can be adapted to meet an articulated need to track behavioral health in occupations associated with high stress, high workload and high danger factor such as military applications and law enforcement. A tool that enables the systematic and efficient tracking of individual behavioral health status in these occupational settings can provide a means to detect and address behavioral disorders and mental conditions at an early stage. Taking military operations as an example, there is evidence that behavioral disorders and mental conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury have a high prevalence among soldiers. There is a present market opportunity to deliver an Individualized Behavioral Health Monitoring Tool to track changes in behavioral health status in soldiers during training, deployment, and post-deployment. The Army currently has 238,000 soldiers deployed overseas in 120 countries (source: US Army, 2006).

The Individualized Behavioral Health Monitoring Tool will meet the specific requirements of long duration exploration missions and provide feedback to astronauts, Op Psy Personnel and Flight Surgeons about behavioral health status as well as aid in the selection of countermeasures. It will be designed to be unobtrusive and require minimal crew time or effort to train and utilize. The resulting product will be primarily relevant to NASA's Behavioral Health and Performance (BHP) research gaps (as of July 2009): BMED 3 (What are the optimal methods to detect and assess decrements in behavioral health during exploration missions?) but will also be relevant to gaps BMED1, BMED2, BMED6, BMED7, and BMED8. When validated, the Individualized Behavioral Health Monitoring Tool will be deployed in the constellation program and lunar missions to support crew behavioral health efforts during training, mission and return to Earth.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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