Digital psychiatry

AbstractThe American managed care movement has been viewed as a big experiment and is being watched closely by the rest of the world. In the meanwhile, computer‐based information technology (IT) is changing the practice of medicine, much more rapidly than managed care. A New World of digitized knowledge and information has been created. Although literature on IT in psychiatry is largely absent in peer‐reviewed psychiatric journals, IT is finding its way into all aspects of medicine, particularly psychiatry. Telepsychiatry programs are becoming very popular. At the same time, medical information sites are flourishing and evolving into a new health‐care industry. Patient–physician information asymmetry is decreasing as patients are gaining easy access to medical information hitherto only available to professionals. Thus, psychiatry is facing another paradigm shift, at a time when most attention has been focused on managed care. In this new digital world, knowledge and information are no longer the sole property of professionals. Value will migrate from traditional in‐person office‐based therapy to digital clinical products, from in‐person library search and classroom didactic instruc