Insights from research and an interview with Dr. Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH, chief health officer at Special Olympics International, and professor of paediatrics at the University of Washington, as featured in a recent JAMA interview.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is steadily reshaping medicine, from streamlining diagnoses to powering drug discovery, but one of its most meaningful applications may lie in an often-overlooked area: communication. For individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), medical visits are too often marked by frustration, misunderstanding, and a sense of exclusion. Here, AI may offer new tools to create more effective, welcoming encounters between patients and clinicians.
People with IDD face higher rates of chronic disease and lower life expectancy compared with the general population, yet their barriers to accessing care are not only structural but also interpersonal. Many patients report feeling unwelcome in clinical encounters, describing rushed visits, confusing language, or physicians who “talk down” to them. Follow-up rates remain low even for urgent conditions, in part because patients leave visits dissatisfied or unclear about next steps.
As Dr. Dimitri Christakis, explains, “Think of it like speaking a different language. We’ve built systems for interpreters for non-English speakers. We need a similar approach for people with IDD.”
This is where AI could step in. Tools that automatically adjust the reading level of health information, reframe clinical jargon, or provide conversational prompts could help physicians tailor communication in real time. AI-enabled scribes, for instance, might not only reduce paperwork but also summarise encounters in patient-friendly language, making follow-up instructions clearer.
Wearable devices trained on inclusive biometric data could also give caregivers and clinicians better insights into patients’ health, reducing the communication burden during short visits. By interpreting signals or symptoms that patients struggle to express, these systems could act as a kind of “translator” between experience and medical language.
AI may also serve as a valuable teaching tool. Simulated encounters with AI-generated patients with IDD could help medical students practice and refine their communication, receiving feedback on tone, reading level, or clarity. With only about half of U.S. medical schools currently offering formal disability training, AI could fill a critical educational gap.
Underlying these possibilities is the principle of universal design: if systems are created with the needs of marginalised groups in mind, they often improve care for everyone. Dr. Christakis uses the example of kitchen tools which became largely popular among all consumers, despite being originally designed for people with arthritis. In the same way, communication aids for people with IDD could make health information clearer for the broader public too.
None of this will happen automatically. As Christakis and coauthors emphasised in a recent JAMA Pediatrics article, people with IDD must be directly included in the design and testing of AI health tools. Without their input, well-intentioned innovations risk repeating the very patterns of exclusion they aim to correct.
AI will not solve health disparities on its own. But if developed with inclusion at its core, it could help transform frustrating, alienating clinical visits into encounters where patients feel understood, respected, and – most importantly – welcomed.
Sources:
AI’s Role in Advancing Equity for Individuals With Developmental Disabilities
How AI Could Improve Health Care for People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
