Space 3D co-host Eleanor speaks with NASA Medical Advising Professor Charles Doarn on Space Health and Medicine. Topics covered include design and history of space station Freedom, inpatient versus outpatient medicine in the Crew Healthcare system, mission duration planning in US versus Russia, the problem with antigravity surgical theaters, physician astronauts, emergency medical evacuations and more!

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Adapted from the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center Health News, published 3/1/2017:

Charles Doarn, a recognized national and international leader in telemedicine as a scholar and teacher, served as the principle author of NASA’s Integrated Strategic Plan for Telemedicine. He currently serves as executive secretary of the Multilateral Medical Policy Board for the International Space Station,and served as the Program Executive for Aerospace Medicine and Telemedicine at NASA headquarters throughout the 1990s.

He has published over 378 manuscripts, editorials, books, book chapters, federal reports, invited commentaries, and served as editor, associate editor, editorial board member or reviewer on a variety of health-related disciplines for 40 different journals. He recently worked with senior physicians and scientists to develop and edit the fourth edition of Space Physiology and Medicine: From Evidence to Practice, a text, he says, is "replete with colorful images that highlight what we have learned over the past 60 years, and the paradigm shift in medicine is directly related to the work done in this extreme environment.” A second book, entitled A Multinational Telemedicine System for Disaster Response: Opportunities and Challenges is the culmination of a four-year effort with NATO on telemedicine and disasters.

In addition to grant-related tasks, Doarn is also on faculty in UC’s Masters of Public Health program in the Department of Environmental Health where he teaches several courses in global health and public health informatics. He also holds additional academic appointments in Political Science at UC, Aerospace Medicine at Wright State University, and Emergency Medicine at George Washington University. He is a fellow of the ATA and the Aerospace Medical Association, an Honorary NASA Flight Surgeon, and recipient of the Astronaut’s award, the Silver Snoopy for his work in Telemedicine for NASA worldwide.

Doarn is currently on an Interpersonal Agreement (IPA) assignment as Special Assistant to the NASA Chief Health and Medical Officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. He serves as the co-chair of Federal Telehealth (FedTel) for the US Government. As a Fulbright specialist with the U.S. Department of State, Doarn spent time teaching in Macedonia. Doarn served as the executive director of the award winning, International Virtual e-Hospital, which developed telemedicine in the Balkans, including Kosova, Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro. He is a peer review funded researcher and has served as PI on a number of federally-funded grants, including NEEMO 12, where astronauts and researchers lived in an underwater habitat off the coast of Florida. Doarn served as executive director of UC’s Center for Surgical Innovation; executive director, Telehealth Video Resources Center in Ohio; executive director and co-principal investigator for NASA’s Research Partnership Center for Medical Informatics and Technology Applications, located at Yale University and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.