Innovations in medical technology in space will transform care on Earth

For patients who do not have ready access to medical care in their communities, solutions to problems of timely diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions may soon be on their way… from space. Highly portable technologies that allow doctors to rapidly diagnose astronauts in space could enable medical practitioners to help patients here on Earth receive more timely diagnoses and treatments.

Christian Paradis, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), recently unveiled "Lab on a CD" and "MicroFlow", two unique space projects funded by the CSA that could help doctors diagnose patients more rapidly. They will use space as a test environment to develop smaller, cheaper, and more efficient medical technologies that can process and analyze medical samples aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"Canada has carved out a world-class reputation in several specialized areas of space research and is home to technologies that have improved the lives of Canadians and contributed to sustaining our economy," declared Minister Paradis. "Lab on a CD and MicroFlow are remarkable, cutting-edge Canadian contributions to the world that will help patient diagnosis."

"State-of-the-art medical technology is an area in which our country can become a world leader," declared Steve MacLean, President of the Canadian Space Agency. "The technology solutions that provide a rapid medical diagnosis for an astronaut onboard the International Space Station could one day be standard equipment in your doctor's office."

Real-time diagnostics of infectious diseases at the patient's point-of-care

Lab on a CD, a project led by Dr. Michel G. Bergeron of the Infectious Disease Research Centre at Laval University (Quebec), is a prototype of an ultrafast, highly sensitive and fully automated medical diagnostic test unit. The technology is close to a major breakthrough: real-time diagnostics of infectious diseases at the patient's point of care. Lab on a CD can perform sophisticated genetic analysis of samples in just minutes, whereas existing tests can take days and even weeks to be conducted in a laboratory. With $150,000 in funding from the Canadian Space Agency, Dr. Bergeron and his team have successfully tested the technology in microgravity during reduced gravity flights. Supported by Canada's Cooperation Agreement with the European Space Agency, the project has received $1.1 million through the European Life and Physical Sciences Program to carry out the development of a prototype system that will perform bioanalysis on the ISS.

Transportable bioanalysis

MicroFlow is a technology demonstration platform developed by the National Optics Institute (INO), in Montréal, Quebec. Following an initial investment of $300,000 for testing, the Canadian Space Agency awarded INO a contract of $2.3 million in 2011 to design, build, and test the first generation of transportable flow cytometers for use on the ISS. Flow cytometers are common in both research and clinical laboratory settings where they are used in a wide range of diagnostics, from detecting blood cancers in patients to identifying bacterial pathogens in food or water. The goal of MicroFlow is to test INO's novel fibre-optic approach, enabling the development of a miniaturized, portable and robust cytometer technology. This technology is ideal for use in space and in-field terrestrial bioanalysis. The MicroFlow test platform will be introduced on the ISS with Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Chris Hadfield, in December 2012.