Bilingual AI Chatbot: Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation
The Arizona State University Artificial Intelligence Cloud Innovation Center, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), collaborated with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation to design a bilingual conversational AI chatbot. The chatbot enables patients, caregivers and healthcare providers to access trusted information about inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The solution reduces navigation complexity on the organization’s website and provides instant responses, with human follow-up available for out-of-scope questions.
Problem
The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation hosts a wealth of IBD resources and patients and caregivers often struggle to navigate multiple web pages, particularly when they need urgent information. This creates delays in accessing critical knowledge, increases stress and limits the organization’s ability to support its community efficiently.
They also needed a way to highlight events and programs while ensuring that users could engage in both English and Spanish.
Student Overview
The AI CIC is powered by ASU student workers. The following students collaborated with AWS mentors to design and develop this solution:
Role: Cloud Developer | Connect with Hermanth on LinkedIn
Experience: Working on the Crohn's Colitis Q Business project was an incredibly rewarding experience that combined cutting-edge AI technology with meaningful healthcare impact. I architected and developed a comprehensive conversational AI solution using Amazon Q Business, integrating multiple AWS services including Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and SES to create a multilingual patient support chatbot. The project challenged me to implement sophisticated features like confidence-based response scoring, automatic email follow-ups for uncertain answers, real-time translation services, and intelligent citation filtering that distinguishes between document sources and actionable website links. I designed a robust CI/CD pipeline using AWS CDK and CodeBuild, created detailed IAM security profiles, and built a responsive React widget that seamlessly integrates into the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation website. The most fulfilling aspect was developing a system that provides immediate AI-powered guidance so visitors receive expert human follow-up when the AI's confidence is below 80%, creating a perfect blend of automated efficiency and human expertise that can help improve patient care and access to reliable information on IBD.
Role: UI/UX Designer | Connect with Shristi on LinkedIn
Experience: My role as designer was to create a lightweight, floating chat widget that delivers trusted IBD answers in seconds. In Figma, I built wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes and tuned microinteractions so every tap and transition feels intentional. The UI includes an English / Español toggle and a marketing column to surface vetted resources without interrupting the chat flow. It also features an expand/contract button so users can enlarge the chat for longer conversations and collapse it back without changing the session state. Because the widget is persistent, users can navigate across pages or tabs while the conversation state remains intact, though conversation history is not displayed. When the bot cannot answer or a request is out of scope, a gentle fallback prompts for an email and details so a Foundation agent can follow up quickly. Rapid usability testing helped sharpen microcopy and error states to lower cognitive load. Every choice was deliberate and compassionate - by crafting flows that can make trusted help feel accessible, humane and truly within reach.
Approach
The ASU CIC team collaborated to design a lightweight, scalable chatbot that transforms how users access and engage with IBD information online. Built on a secure, serverless AWS architecture, the chatbot features a multilingual interface, marketing carousel, and an integrated support form that routes complex inquiries directly to its IBD Help Center.
To achieve this, the team combined several key AWS services, including Amazon Q Business for generating conversational, knowledge-based responses; AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway for managing backend workflows and secure data exchange; Amazon DynamoDB for session and form data storage; Amazon SES for automated follow-up communications; Amazon Translate for seamless English–Spanish interaction; and AWS Amplify for scalable hosting and deployment.
Together, these technologies deliver a reliable, HIPAA-compliant solution that enhances accessibility, provides accurate and bilingual information and strengthens the Foundation’s ability to support patients and caregivers efficiently.
Industry Impact
This chatbot reimagines how healthcare nonprofits engage their audiences. By enabling bilingual access to trusted IBD information, the Foundation reduces website navigation time and empowers users to find accurate answers within seconds.
The system also streamlines staff workload by automating routine inquiries and offering human follow-up only when necessary, allowing team members to focus on high-impact outreach, event promotion and personalized support.
"Partnering with the AWS Cloud Innovation Center has been a significant step forward in implementing generative AI for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. Through this collaboration, we gained a deeper understanding of how to apply generative AI to real-world organizational needs, creating practical, impactful solutions for our community. As a patient-first organization that puts our community at the heart of everything we do, the chatbot solution developed through this process empowers us to engage more effectively with our website visitors and sets the stage for future innovations that will expand our impact."
Rohit Suri, Chief Technology Officer, Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation
Wider Application
The Crohn’s & Colitis Q Business Chatbot sets a new benchmark for how healthcare organizations can use AI to improve access to reliable, multilingual medical information. Beyond serving the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation community, this conversational AI framework holds tremendous promise across healthcare, education and nonprofit sectors. Hospitals and specialty clinics can adapt similar chatbots to deliver accurate, condition-specific guidance to patients and caregivers, helping them navigate post-discharge care, treatment plans and medication management. Public health agencies can use the same architecture to provide multilingual updates on vaccination programs, preventive care and wellness initiatives, reducing barriers to essential information for diverse populations.
Educational institutions and medical training programs could leverage this solution to support student learning through interactive, AI-powered knowledge bases that simulate real patient inquiries. Likewise, nonprofits addressing chronic illnesses or rare diseases can deploy customized versions to share vetted resources, manage event inquiries and connect users to human assistance when needed. By combining automation with compassionate design, this solution demonstrates how conversational AI can expand the reach of credible health information, empower self-advocacy and strengthen patient engagement across communities worldwide.
Next Steps
The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation intends to integrate the chatbot’s insights into broader technology planning, leveraging conversational data to identify information gaps and user needs. Future phases will focus on expanding the chatbot’s knowledge base and embedding it within other digital platforms across other domains to streamline communication and data collection.
About the ASU CIC
The ASU Artificial Intelligence Cloud Innovation Center (AI CIC), powered by AWS is a no-cost design thinking and rapid prototyping shop dedicated to bridging the digital divide and driving innovation in the nonprofit, healthcare, education, and government sectors.
Our expert team harnesses Amazon’s pioneering approach to dive deep into high-priority pain points, meticulously define challenges, and craft strategic solutions. We collaborate with AWS solutions architects and talented student workers to develop tailored prototypes showcasing how advanced technology can tackle a wide range of operational and mission-related challenges.
Discover how we use technology to drive innovation. Visit our website at ASU AI CIC or contact us directly at [email protected].