A Model-Based Systems Engineering Journey to Developing a Concept of Operations (ConOps)

In 2017, NASA's Human Research Program (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element began a transition from a traditional document-centric to a model-centric Systems Engineering approach when defining its foundation medical systems. These foundation medical systems define Concepts of Operations (ConOps) and identify generic requirements for medical systems based on generic crew and mission environment assumptions and guidance from NASA standards (e.g., medical “Levels of Care”). By making the transition, ExMC intends to improve communication with stakeholders regarding foundation medical system requirements and content. This, in turn, will translate into user-centric medical system development for mission-specific medical systems and result in more robust systems that will lead to better communication with stakeholders to identify gaps in diagnostic and treatment capabilities, thereby lowering crew treatment risks. ExMC's Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) paradigm facilitates stakeholder's understanding of the system, more frequent updates of project content, and a centralized “source of truth” for the project. For this current foundation medical system development effort, ExMC has expanded its use of MBSE to include all ConOps content within the model. Previously, the ConOps content primarily resided within a published document, with only select content being incorporated into the model. This effort required structural and organizational workflow changes, including showing stakeholders how the information they require would be presented in the model and gaining their acceptance of this approach. This paper documents key lessons learned during the transformation of the Medical System ConOps from a document- to model-centric system, focusing on how the resultant model represents information, the agile workflows used by Systems Engineers when developing the model, how the model integrates into project plans, how ExMC leadership influenced key users to accept the proposed transformation, and, finally, how the users interact with the newly developed model and its available information.