Happening today, unrelated to TrapC, TrapC designer speaking about space medicine at SpaceCom in Orlando
Actor Robert Picardo portrayed the EMH virtual doctor in Star Trek Voyager. MCARE is building an AI space doctor for real.
Orlando, FL (trapc.org) 28 January 2026 – It’s me, Robin Rowe speaking today at SpaceCom. If you’d like a copy of my presentation, contact me.
As humans work and live in space, inevitably, astronaut health emergencies will arise. In outer space there is no ambulance. No hospital. We do not have the digital hologram doctor from Star Trek Voyager, at least, not yet.
Created in collaboration with the United Nations and funded by a $1-million-dollar development grant from Facebook Reality Labs, MCARE is a medical telepresence system creating digital twins of all 52,000+ hospitals in the world, to enable doctors wearing AR/VR glasses to remotely scrub in to assist from anywhere to anywhere. Using MCARE, doctors will be able to use telepresence to diagnose and treat patients anywhere on the planet and even in outer space.
What about when telepresence from Earth isn’t practical?
According to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the distance between Earth and Mars varies significantly, from about 4 light-minutes away, to over 20 minutes. That’s the time a radio signal takes to travel the distance. Someday, quantum-entangled subspace radio will make Earth-to-Mars communication instantaneous. Even so, there may be communications blackouts that isolate astronauts. In no-comms situations, AI doctors integrated into MCARE will stand ready to diagnose, to prescribe, even to perform robotic surgery.
MCARE is a technology platform to treat patients, to trial new medical procedures and therapies in realistic digital twin hospital scenarios, to research medicine using AI, to interconnect all the proprietary hospital telemedicine systems worldwide and for international doctor and nurse training and certification. The MCARE 3D telemedicine system will be released as free open source software to maximize adoption across hospitals. MCARE is scheduled to complete development in 2026.
The startup Heroic Robots is expanding MCARE into a platform to purchase and track medical supplies, software to anticipate and meet hospital logistical and material needs.
Healthcare in Space, the AI 3D Doctor Is In – MCARE
Wed, January 28th, 2026 at4:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Exhibit Floor, Booth #7961
Second Stage: TINA Talks
Speaker:
Robin Rowe, CEO – Heroic Robots
Conference: Jan 29–30, 2026 | Expo: Jan 28–30, 2026 | Orlando, FL
Pr. Robin Rowe
CEO Heroic Robots
United States
Robin Rowe is the CEO of Heroic Robots, founded to create robots that save lives. Winner Novartis Biome innovation prize for disease analysis using AI. Architect of MCARE 3D worldwide telemedicine platform, created in collaboration with the United Nations with a $1-million-dollar metaverse grant from Facebook Reality Labs. Rowe is also the executive director of Fountain Abode, the AI research institute near Washington D.C.
Professor Rowe teaches object-oriented C++ AI vibe programming at CCBC, the Community College of Baltimore County. Has taught computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School and also the University of Washington.
Technical background includes experience as UN ITU Medical Metaverse Task Group chairman, World Health Organization Augmented Reality Group engineering manager, Lenovo ThinkReality augmented reality glasses product design strategist, DreamWorks Animation software engineer, NBC-TV broadcast news technical director, and a DARPA and U.S. Navy research scientist.