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Actively maintained field guide
SLP + LLM
Field Guide
A free clinical knowledge resource that helps speech-language pathologists use large language models for documentation, goal writing, and clinical workflows.
"A good prompt isn't a tech skill. It's clinical reasoning made visible."
I/O = input/output. In computing, it's how a system receives and sends information. In SLP, it's what we study every day: how people take in language and produce it. This guide sits at that intersection.
New here?
Start Here
This isn't about learning to use LLMs. It's about articulating what you already know (your clinical expertise) clearly enough that any tool can work with it.
See It In Action
Interactive Demo
Watch how a well-crafted prompt produces clinically useful output. These are pre-generated examples: no API calls, no data sent anywhere.
Clinician
AI Response requires clinical review
Explore
Find What You Need
Enter from any angle. The guide is organized around four questions: What do I need to know? What am I trying to do? Where do I work? Did I do it right?
Learn
Foundations
Core principles, PHI safety, how LLMs work, prompt patterns, evidence base, ethical decision trees, and model comparison.
8 guidesGlossary
Every term defined from both sides, clinical and technical. SLPs and developers finally speaking the same language.
25 termsResearch Digests
Structured summaries of peer-reviewed studies on LLMs in healthcare and clinical documentation, focusing on what the evidence actually says.
6 studies Do
Prompt Library
Each prompt is an inventory of what a competent clinician knows (assessment frameworks, legal requirements, clinical reasoning) made actionable.
12 promptsWorkflows
Multi-step guides with decision points where clinical judgment overrides the tool. Not just prompts, but sequences.
6 workflowsTasks
Goal writing, documentation, communication, compliance, clinical reasoning, and material creation.
6 tasks Adapt
Settings
Schools, medical/acute, SNF/rehab, early intervention, private practice, and university supervision.
6 settingsDomains
Articulation, language, fluency, voice, pragmatics, cognitive-linguistic, dysphagia, AAC, literacy, and hearing.
10 domainsClinical Patterns
Map your clinical philosophy to LLM interaction strategies. Naturalistic, discrete trial, family-centered; each approach is different.
6 patterns Verify
Antipatterns
Before-and-after examples that reveal clinical gaps, not LLM mistakes. If you can't spot what's wrong, that's the lesson.
8 antipatternsCase Studies
De-identified clinical scenarios showing real SLP workflows with LLMs: what worked, what failed, and lessons learned.
5 casesPolicy Templates
Adaptable LLM governance templates for schools, hospitals, private practices, and clinical education programs.
4 templatesResources
Digital media literacy, full references, changelog, and supporting materials.
3 resourcesOrigin
Why This Exists
SLPs spend more time on paperwork than almost any other clinical task. The people doing that work should have a say in how it evolves, and the tools to make it better should be free.
The Gap
Documentation eats clinical hours. New tools can help, but only if they're built on real clinical knowledge, not generic LLM hype. Clinicians needed a resource made for them, by one of them.
The Background
This resource is built by a school-based speech-language pathologist in New York who also writes software. That dual lens — clinical practice and software development — drives everything here.
The Problem
Paperwork is where clinical knowledge becomes a legal document. If new tools are going to touch that process, clinicians (not vendors) need to define the standards.
The Position
SLP/IO isn't pro-LLM or anti-LLM. It's pro-clinician. This resource is free because the knowledge it organizes already belongs to the profession. We're just making it easier to use.
Harmonic Systems is the studio behind SLP/IO, a small operation where clinical practice and software development overlap. SLP/IO is its first public resource: a living document where the rigor of speech-language pathology meets the capability of modern language models.
Sustainability
Prompts Worth the Water
Every AI query costs electricity and water. A shared, maintained reference is a better use of resources than thousands of clinicians asking chatbots the same questions independently. When you do use an LLM, make it count.
Low-Value Use
- Asking "what are good IEP goals for articulation?" (this already exists everywhere)
- Pasting one progress note and asking AI to "make it sound better"
- Generating generic parent letters you'll rewrite anyway
- Running the same prompt every session instead of saving a reusable template
- Using a chatbot as a search engine for information in your own files
High-Value Use
- Correlating a semester of progress notes to identify patterns across goals
- Building a reusable documentation guide for your setting that you use all year
- Reframing deficit-based language into strengths-based, neurodiversity-affirming descriptions
- Synthesizing research across multiple sources into a team evidence summary
- Drafting complex medical necessity arguments with your specific clinical data
The position: Being thoughtful about AI isn't just about clinical ethics. It's about resource ethics. Reformatting a three-line note isn't worth the compute. Surfacing patterns across a semester of data, or finding language that honors a student's dignity while meeting legal documentation requirements — that's worth it.
Background
About This Resource
SLP/IO is a Harmonic Systems project, built by a speech-language pathologist and software developer who has spent years writing the same IEP goals, progress notes, and evaluation reports that you write.
This resource is free because the knowledge inside it isn't new. It's what competent clinicians already know: assessment frameworks, legal standards, clinical reasoning, ethical boundaries. We just organized it in a way that makes it usable with modern tools. Clinicians deserve to participate in how their paperwork evolves, not have it decided for them.
The question was never "should SLPs use LLMs?" It's "who defines what good looks like?" The answer should be clinicians. This is our attempt to make that happen.
This resource was developed with LLM writing tools and reviewed through clinical judgment.
About Harmonic Systems: A small, independent studio in the Hudson Valley region of New York, built by a school-based speech-language pathologist who also writes software. SLP/IO is an attempt to bridge the gap between what clinicians need and what the technology conversation currently offers.
Connect
Get Involved
Want to contribute, collaborate, or push back?
This guide gets better when clinicians challenge it. If you've found a use case we missed, a principle that needs nuance, or something that's flat-out wrong, that's exactly the kind of feedback that matters.
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