Advances in data science and Electronic Medical Records open up unprecedented opportunities for improving our healthcare delivery, which will redefine what it means to practice psychiatry.

Larger volumes of detailed patient information are now accumulating in electronic format than would have been conceivable 20–30 years ago, which is transforming the way mental health conditions can be understood and treated.

Data analytics provides us with the capacity to drive forward a step-change in mental health provision and research. Analysis of longitudinal clinical data from EMRs creates the potential to:

• Explore mental health across the lifespan - understanding how symptoms change from young children, through adolescence, to old age.
• Improve detection, screening & diagnosis - through analysing symptom data, we can make diagnoses more accurate.
• Understand the causes of mental health disorders - learn how external factors affect mental health; gain insight into the genetic backgrounds of different disorders.
• Develop new treatments & improve existing ones - through advanced analytics we can hone predictive models for the most effective intervention for each individual patient.