Schneider Children’s Medical Center and Israeli tech volunteer organization Code for Israel have introduced an AI system that helps hospitalized children communicate without speaking. Its developers say it can create personalized, printable communication boards in under five minutes.

The boards give children a way to express pain, fear and everyday needs when a medical condition or treatment makes speech difficult or impossible. They can also help patients who have not learned to write or are too weak to do so.

For staff, the change is in the preparation. A board tailored to one patient could previously take hours to assemble. The new platform lets therapists build it in minutes, then update it, share it with colleagues and keep it in a library for future use.

The process begins with a speech-language therapist talking with the child and family. Details such as age, language, cultural background and medical condition shape the words and pictures the AI proposes. Clinicians can edit those suggestions and choose anything from a simple two-picture board to a version with 16 images and messages.

That flexibility matters because a seriously ill child may struggle to use a tablet or keyboard. The board’s content and complexity can be adjusted to the child’s condition and abilities, according to Dr. Oshrat Sella Weiss, who heads Schneider’s speech-language pathology service.

“The story is restoring children’s ability to communicate, express themselves, and participate actively in their care,” Sella Weiss said.

Picture boards are an established part of augmentative and alternative communication, which supports people with limited or absent speech. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association identifies both lasting communication difficulties and temporary situations, including intensive care, as settings in which this support can be used.

The initiative grew out of Schneider’s speech-language pathology team, working with the hospital’s innovation and research center. Code for Israel’s volunteers developed the technology, bringing Israeli expertise in software and design to a problem identified by clinicians.

Sella Weiss described one case involving a deaf girl whose family had misunderstood which food she wanted. Staff created a board showing foods she liked, and the child pointed to bourekas, clearing up a misunderstanding that had left her crying and refusing to eat.