MEMP PhD Thesis Defense (12:00pm): Allison Porter

Automation Framework for Exploration Medicine (AFEM): A path for integrating automation into autonomous emergency care

Long communication latencies in exploration spaceflight will make current real-time support paradigms for urgent medical events infeasible. Further, as mission duration increases for exploration, so too will the probability of adverse low- and high-criticality medical events. The need for in-situ resolution to medical problems will require crewmembers to perform rapid and precise decision-making to both diagnose issues and formulate treatment plans. We posit that integrating automation into the care paradigm can address the challenges to medical care in long-duration spaceflight posed by resource gaps. However, it is not clear what aspects of the exploration care paradigm are most well-suited for the integration of automation.

Using the lens of Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) (a viable diagnostic tool for exploration medicine due to its portable, low mass/volume, speedy, versatile nature), this work investigates the translation of patient care from the hospital to the austere and spaceflight environments and explores how automation may enable that transition. We investigated the role of human-automation teams for emergency care in spaceflight using naturalistic methods with a two-pronged approach: 1) characterizing a candidate task for automation and 2) characterizing the work domain(s) encompassing that task within the human-automation system. This work composes our Automation Framework for Exploration Medicine (AFEM). To overcome the challenge of characterizing a dynamic system surrounding a task that does not exist in its intended—inaccessible—use-case (i.e., POCUS on Mars), we leveraged accessible and analogous domains encompassing that task to guide the development of human-automation systems. To carry out this approach, we conducted in-situ observations in a hospital Emergency Department to understand how clinicians process contextual information in an urgent medical setting to provide care using ultrasound technology. We also engaged specialists in semi-structured interviews (based upon human-machine teaming systems engineering methodologies) to identify key procedural information components for automation. Lastly, we developed a Toolkit—grounded in cognitive systems engineering methodologies— that provides a novel framework for drawing conclusions concerning domain- and task-specific constraints from analogous environments. A supporting Roadmap provides guidance for experimenters interested in further development of automated and autonomous systems. 

From this work, we conclude that Mediating Factors from candidate work domains call for distinct, targeted guidance for automation support and is valuable in providing system developers with tunable automation level and implementation guidelines within and/or between those work domains. Further, our findings elucidated highest-priority system design requirements for non-expert POCUS end-users regarding transparency, augmenting cognition, and coordination to support generating a common mental model. Finally, the Toolkit and Roadmap scaffold—grounded in cognitive systems engineering methodology—guide system development in integrating automation into this novel ecosystem. This scaffold is well-positioned to be leveraged by other system designers who do not have easy, reasonable, or sufficient access to a unique domain for which they are developing systems.

The outcome of AFEM supports large-scale efforts in preparing for future human exploration missions not only on the level of augmenting exploration medical capabilities, but also on the higher level of developing the structure by which automation and autonomy is integrated into human exploration missions in non-medical domains. The AFEM contributes to both the smooth integration of automation into exploration medical capabilities, as well as to the integration of automation into every aspect of long-duration space exploration missions. Evidence-based design practice is directly translatable to automation assistance for medical providers in resource-limited environments; these systems are also applicable to any situation where a person’s sensory processing, perception, decision-making, or response selection could be aided with automation to accomplish a task.

Thesis Supervisor:
Katya Arquilla, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

Thesis Supervisor:
Aleksandra Stankovic, PhD 
Director, Center for Space Medicine Research, MGH; Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, HMS

Thesis Committee Chair:
Dava J. Newman, PhD 
Director, MIT Media Lab; Apollo Professor, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT

Thesis Readers:
N. Stuart Harris, MD 
Chief, MGH SPEAR MED Division (Space, Ecological, Arctic, Resource limited Medicine); Director, MGH Wilderness Medicine Fellowship; Director, MGH Space Medicine Fellowship; Department of Emergency Medicine, MGH; Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, HMS; Affiliated Faculty, Arctic Initiative, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Andrew Liu, PhD 
Lecturer, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT

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Allison Porter is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allison Porter MEMP PhD Thesis Defense
Time: Monday, April 29, 2024, 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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