Meet the Initiative - HERMES
From launch vehicles to space stations, the growth of the commercial spaceflight industry is creating more opportunities for human exploration in space. As more destinations, vehicles, and flight providers become available for space travel, it is crucial to capture biomedical, environmental, and mission-related data from space explorers as they move throughout space.
HERMES is a real-time, customizable and configurable medical health data management platform that enables space and Earth-based medical teams to monitor, predict, and respond to changes in a crew member’s health status.
TRISH created HERMES to facilitate the semi-autonomous collection and monitoring of an astronaut’s biomedical and mission-related data on-orbit, allowing clinical and research teams to access critical information at any time.
The Challenges
- Real-time access to astronaut in-flight health data for monitoring and mitigating risk.
- Local support within the spaceflight vehicle to enable dynamic operational decision-making.
- Interoperable data with numerous health inputs from a broad selection of tools and compatible across a range of different spaceflight vehicles.
The HERMES Solution
A Medical System Architecture
HERMES is the foundational layer of a medical system architecture in space, creating a network that enables data to flow seamlessly from its source to storage to a variety of users. The platform serves as the connective tissue across infrastructures, supporting both government agencies and private space launch providers. HERMES is comprised of four central functions and capabilities: aggregation of human health and performance data, vehicle-agnostic software, interoperability of data sources and users, and seamless remote care. HERMES is scalable, interoperable, and allows for swapping of medical devices, environmental sensors, analytics dashboards, AI tools, and other resources. It also enables flexible transitions of medical records between space vehicles and launch providers so that an astronaut’s data follows them as they journey through space. The vehicle-agnostic design allows the same HERMES platform to be used across multiple vehicles, offering a standardized data management capability, regardless of where humans explore in space. HERMES intakes and aggregates medical, research, environmental, and mission data, and then manages its distribution to the patient, healthcare providers, researchers, and algorithmic users that assist in the monitoring and diagnostic processes.
Prioritizing Accessible Medical Data
The HERMES platform keeps medical data local to the astronaut and available to medical and research assets in their spacecraft, their medical team, and physicians back on Earth. By keeping health data independent from vehicles and launch providers, HERMES helps maintain data accuracy and ensure each crew member’s health records are easily accessible.
Seamless Remote Care
From Earth to space, this centralized health data follows an astronaut to any location and spaceflight vehicle or destination, empowering medical teams to track, diagnose, and respond to biomedical changes based on known history, ensuring astronauts are in top form to conduct their mission. Quick and reliable access to medical records through HERMES enables astronauts and their care team to make informed and timely healthcare decisions. AI and machine learning tools strengthen our ability to diagnose and treat autonomously, providing another layer of self-sufficiency aboard missions. The HERMES platform starts the shift of medical operations being directed from Mission Control on Earth to being managed by the crew in space, bolstering remote care and allowing better protection of their health and the overall productivity of their mission.
Partners in building HERMES
TRISH selected two companies in 2023 to independently develop the HERMES system to improve healthcare delivery and data management for spaceflight participants and researchers. The two companies now work to ensure readiness and implementation of HERMES on spaceflight missions.
EXPAND
TRISH’s EXPAND Program collects pre-, in-, and post-flight health and performance research data from multiple commercial space flights.
SENTINEL
TRISH is advancing solutions to the known human health risks and dangers of long-term deep space exposure with its SENTINEL Program.