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Mental health care and the big IT

A personal view

Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, London SW10 9NH

When I was at school the big IT everyone talked about, some explored avidly and others shunned nervously was sex. In psychiatry today, as in so many other fields IT is information technology. This article is a polemic. I believe IT (the new sort) is indispensable for modem mental health care. In the British National Health Service we have a window of opportunity to get IT right and if clinicians fail to act decisively and quickly, there is a risk that the chance will be lost.