Psychiatry and the internet: a new dawn?

There seems a certain inevitability that traditional methods of health care delivery are going to change in the age of the internet. To a degree, change is already happening, as specialists around the world share information via broadband links that enable them better to assess and treat patients, for example in the fields of radiology or dermatology, where the presentation of visual information is critical. It is less obvious that specialists would find it valuable to share clinical observations in psychiatry, a specialty where the aural medium of communication is so much more important than the visual. We have asked four experts in telemedicine to give us their views on the current status of novel communication technology with special relevance to psychiatry.