 space station freedom The next step in our continuing effort to explore beyond Earth's boundaries As we establish a permanent presence in space new medical challenges will have to be met With longer missions larger crews and the complexities of a medical rescue The health of freedom's international crew will be essential for the success of this program The crew health care system or CHECS is currently being designed and developed primarily at NASA's Johnson Space Center Distributed throughout the space station This system will provide the total spectrum of crew health care with three distinct but interconnected components the exercise countermeasures facility the environmental health system and the health maintenance facility Following is a description of the health maintenance facility or HMF component The HMF will provide necessary in-flight medical care including prevention diagnosis treatment and care during transport if the patient must be evacuated In building the HMF current off-the-shelf equipment will be used as much as possible However, existing technology must be adapted in order to operate in microgravity and conform to space station weight and size constraints The KC-135 provides a testing environment for equipment and procedures to be used in space Using a parabolic flight path The KC-135 can simulate weightlessness for a few valuable seconds Here a prototype of the patient restraint system is analyzed This piece of equipment must be both flexible and portable On space station it will be used as a structure a treatment area a dental chair and An x-ray table the health maintenance facility has been divided into flight subsystems as well as ground support These subsystems are similar to the medical services found in a large hospital For example the HMF will be designed to provide emergency medical care for injuries medical life support with patient monitoring capabilities respiratory support intravenous or IV fluid and nutritional support a variety of physicians instruments Imaging for diagnostics and therapeutic procedures a Clinical laboratory to provide tests and analysis in areas such as microbiology a Pharmacy containing necessary medications and a computerized inventory control system central supply and a hyperbaric facility for treatment of decompression sickness Although each of these capabilities will be needed on space station freedom It isn't feasible to launch a large hospital facility into orbit As a result the entire health maintenance facility must be designed to fit into a very limited space In a hospital a large staff of highly trained professionals provides health care services The space station will not have those resources Because of limited medical personnel the HMF equipment will be user-friendly and easily maintained In order to provide maximum flexibility the HMF will have a modular design Each piece of equipment will be self-contained and will be held in standard space station equipment racks Unlike a hospital with its mounds of forms and stacks of paper The HMF will use freedoms computer resources to integrate all the information from each subsystem Dr. James Logan of NASA headquarters explains this innovative approach One of the things that we're developing at Johnson Space Center is a concept known as the medical information bus or MIB The MIB would enable all the medical devices on the health maintenance facility To not only interact with each other but also interact with the HMF computer Additional things that would be housed in the health maintenance facility computer would be things like diagnostic and treatment protocols or inventory management for the HMF If there was an illness on board the space station after the crew medical officer did a diagnostic physical exam He would enter the results of that physical exam on a keyboard which would put those results in an electronic medical record However, all the laboratory data and the radiographic data and the electrophysiologic data such as an electrocardiogram Would automatically be entered into an electronic medical record This is the mission control center in Houston, Texas This is the nerve center for the entire mission the flight director and all the flight controllers Stay in this room throughout the duration of the mission. This is also where the mission surgeon sits after the crew medical officer on the space station gathers all the medical data and the data is Collated by the medical information bus that information is downlinked to the earth and reconstructed at this console here in mission control When the information is reconstructed the mission surgeon has to make several key decisions The first decision here She would have to make is whether or not to activate a group of consultants Which would be other physicians and surgeons located all across the country to have them actually look at the data with hear more her The next decision that the doctor would have to make is whether or not the medical condition can be treated definitively at the HMF on board the space station or Whether a rescue needs to be even considered it becomes obvious then when you consider the mission and the cost of medical rescue that one of the prime goals of having a Health maintenance facility on board the space station is to be able to treat as many medical conditions as possible in flight without having a rescue on previous space flights There was nothing comparable to the HMF During those missions the need for in-flight health care was not as great as it will be on space station As part of the crew health care system The health maintenance facility will provide a necessary tool in maintaining the crew's health as we begin to live and Work in space for longer and longer periods of time