DEVELOPMENT OF A MEDICAL DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR ESA ASTRONAUTS

INTRODUCTION: The crew medical support office (CMSO) of the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) has embarked on the project of collecting, collating and analyzing all ESA astronauts' medical data, both mission related and annual examinations. METHODS: A research fellowship position has been created for this purpose, with the primary objectives of developing the hardware infrastructure and facilitating data analysis. As a result, an Electronic Health Record solution has been installed on a secured server hosted within EAC. The system requires two levels of identification and its degree of encryption surpasses current ESA medical data security policy. Periodic off-site backups will be carried out to ensure data conservation if the room containing the server were to suffer structural damage. RESULTS: Now, ESA Flight Surgeons and Nurses are able to securely access the medical data repository from anywhere in the world, to retrieve stored medical records and to build on the database. An active collaboration is maintained with the German Centre Flight Clinic, where astronauts carry out annual examinations. Additional ESA astronaut medical data is currently being gathered by the CMSO from ISS counterparts, to be digitized and stored onto the server. Statistical analysis can be performed to identify significant spaceflight-related health risks. DISCUSSION: Once all data has been analysed, additional publications are intended to benefit not only the space medicine group, but potentially the whole scientific community.