The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial and potentially long-term term effects on the global demand for, and provision of, mental health-care services. With in-person appointments being discouraged to protect both patients and health-care professionals, telemedicine and associated technologies have arisen as potential solutions. In this plenary lecture, Professor Pierre Michel Llorca (France) offers his perspectives on digital technology use in psychiatry thus far, the potential barriers to adoption and the ways that such technology might offer value for psychiatrists and patients in the future.

This lecture was given at the Lundbeck-sponsored live webinar ‘How Technology Has Come to the Forefront in the Treatment of Mental Health’.