Informatics Committee

Dr Paul Bradley

Dr Bradley chairs the Committee as Specialist Advisor on Informatics for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist working with adults with intellectual disability and Chief Clinical Information Officer for Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS FT (HPFT).

He is also Clinician/Practitioner Lead for Digital for the Hertfordshire and West Essex ICS. He was part of the first cohort of the NHS Digital Academy, completing a Masters Degree in Digital Health Leadership and is a Fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.

Please contact us if you would like to:

• join the Informatics Committee
• raise concerns relevant to the Informatics Committee (for example: electronic patient records, outcome metrics, data sharing and telehealth)
• discuss a concern relating to an external organisation you represent.

1. The Informatics Committee will provide a source of advice for the College on all matters related to health information and developments in health information management. This will be achieved through two principal processes.
   • Commenting and advising on all Reports received by the Committee on issues related to health information. It is anticipated that the majority of these will emanate from the NHS Executive and Department of Health.
   • Participation by its members on relevant national committees and working groups concerned with health service information issues.
2. The Committee will represent the College and provide expert advice to appropriate national committees concerned with health informatics (e.g. Academy of College’s Information Group and National Programme for IT).
3. The Committee will provide advice to the Dean and relevant Committees, through PPC, on matters related to professional standards, education and training in relation to health informatics.
4. The Committee will represent the College on national initiatives on curriculum development and multi-disciplinary education and training.
5. The Committee will disseminate information directly to College members to increase their knowledge and support them in all areas of health informatics.

The Mental Health Informatics Group was formed in 1983 and became a Special Interest Group of the College (Computers in Psychiatry Special Interest Group or CIPSIG) in 1987. The group held annual conferences, published a regular newsletter and held Internet workshops at the College Annual Meetings. In 1995 the Computers in Mental Health (CIMH) website was created by Martin Briscoe and Carl Littlejohns. It expanded to contain an extensive database of computing applications used in Mental Health. An email discussion group was also created which eventually became known as CIMH2000. Both website and discussion list were decommissioned in 2003.

In the autumn 1999 newsletter (produced by the then chair Martin Baggaley) membership of CIPSIG was noted to be approximately 250. Since then the membership has steadily grown to more than 1500 and continues to rise.

In 2005 a joint paper was produced by the chair of CIPSIG Matt Evans and the chair of the Informatics Committee Martin Elphick proposing a structure whereby the two groups could work together more cohesively. The paper was accepted early in 2006 along with a change of name from CIPSIG to MHISIG (Mental Health Informatics Special Interest Group) to reflect the increasing importance of the formal topic of health informatics in our members' working lives. In 2014, MHISIG became a Committee of Council.

2022

• Wednesday 23 March
• Thursday 16 June
• Wednesday 21 September
• Thursday 15 December

If you are not a member of the committee, but would like to attend any of the following meetings as an observer or are interested in presenting to the committee, please contact Thomas Rutherford.