If you're a parent of a child with an intellectual or developmental disability (IDD), you understand that your child is one-of-a-kind, with unique strengths, challenges, and support needs. This often makes finding the right support a challenging task, especially when your child’s needs are constantly changing as life unfolds.
In this post, we aim to introduce you to artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to assure quality of life outcomes for people with IDD. Whether your child lives with autsim, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, Fragile X, or other form of Intellectual and/or Developmental Disability, the promise of AI to enrich and improve their life, and yours, is exhilirating.
AI, in simple terms, refers to technologies capable of performing tasks that traditionally demand human intelligence. It's important to note that AI isn't designed to replace human interaction; rather, it holds the promise of aiding individuals with IDD in tackling the complexities of daily life.
Your'e painfully aware that tasks such as scheduling, discovering service providers, exploring housing options, and researching supported living opportunities can be daunting and time-consuming. Not to mention the anxiety from knowing that these tasks must continue to be done for your child's lifetime, even after you're gone.
With AI, these tasks are streamlined, taking mere milliseconds to generate highly personalized outcomes based on your child's unique and dynamic needs across all ages and stages of life.
Introducing Augmented Individuality
At Vest, we’re pioneering the concept “Augmented Individuality” that will use AI to empower your child's autonomy and independence in remarkable ways. We believe that by harnessing the power of AI we will create a system of lifetime personalized support for children with IDD. Our system, built on the Vest platform, will use AI to create a comprehensive profile of your child's abilities, interests, and preferences.
Your child’s Vest profile serves as a foundation for generating customized reminders, guidance, and tools tailored to help your child achieve positive outcomes and thrive in their unique journey across all ages and stages of life.
The Benefits of Augmented Individuality
Imagine the possibilities: With AI technology, Vest will be able to:
Effectively manage daily schedules.
Access services with greater ease, simplifying complex processes.
Explore job opportunities suited to their skills and interests.
Make supported decisions with increased independence.
Coordinate services support with agencies and providers.
Update their support plans as needs change.
Find housing and supported living resources.
Provide real-time support during challenging situations.
Balancing Human Support and AI
It's important to emphasize that AI is not meant to replace human support, but to enhance it. Augmented Individuality is designed to work alongside the support system you've built for your child, offering them additional tools to ensure postive outcomes on their lifetime journey with special needs.
Our Vest vision for Augmented Individuality is different from other AI-based solutions for people with IDD in a few ways.
First, it is designed to be used throughout a person's lifetime, from childhood through adulthood.
Second, it is designed to be personalized to each individual's unique needs and preferences.
Third, it is designed to be continually updated and improved as the individual grows and changes. This ensures that Augmented Individuality can provide the most relevant and helpful support at every stage of life.
Transparency and Individual Control
At Vest, we understand the significance of transparency and individual control. Our approach is centered around ensuring that AI is a tool for empowerment, not a replacement for human intereaction.
As we leverage this new technology, we’ll always focus on shaping Augmented Indviduality to support your child, aligning with their unique needs and your insights and values.
A Collaborative Approach
Our journey is a shared one. We're collaborating closely with parents, caregivers, and experts in the IDD field to develop Augmented Individuality. By working together, we're striving to create a world where every perspon with IDD has the opportunity to reach their full potential, supported with the right blend of human care and technological assistance.
This post is authored by Michael Pearce, a special needs attorney and the founder of Vest, a person-centered IDD records system. Vest's success underscores the viability of next-generation personal information systems designed with people, rather than providers, at the forefront.
We believe that advances in AI will soon enable a surge of solutions generating invaluable data to improve support for people with IDD. This proliferation of knowledge in the evolving “Ask/Answer” world underscores the urgent need for decentralized paradigms for IDD records managment and intelligent autonomy for people with special needs.