Personal health care and corresponding technology with prognostic capability for astronauts - issues and challenges

This paper suggests systems biology as an inter-disciplinary field of study for autonomous preventive health maintenance. Unlike conventional medicine, the systems biology seeks to utilize the engineer´s familiarity with complex artificial systems and “reverse engineering” concepts to facilitate the difficult process of recognition of the structure, function, and precise method of operation of complex biological systems. It has appeared that properly collected and structured Electronic Health Records (EHR) is the key component of any healthcare technology. The expected growth of EHR is the fierce emergence of technologies and tools for self-diagnosis and autonomous preventive health maintenance based on predictive capabilities. Yet it is clear that the technologies combine advanced improvements with new risks. Although electronic medical records and EHR have been in existence for quite a while, the self-diagnostics and autonomous health maintenance technologies still haven´t been widely adopted. Patients should have the assurance that they properly interpret and understand the received recommendations as well as the way how to implement them. So they proceed the recommendations correctly and safely in order to have the best chance possible of achieving the desired outcome. But most importantly, safety considerations should be always a part of system design. Given limited medical support, personal health-tracking and health-management tools are required to predict future health condition if no preventive measures are taken. The proposed approach could be a viable health-care solution for astronauts during long-duration space missions.