About DPSIG

The Digital Psychiatry SIG's work enhances evidence-based leadership within the field of mental health and technology.

The SIG primarily focuses on four areas:

  • technology in clinical practice
  • research insights
  • educational opportunities
  • community building.

Executive Committee

Dr Faith Ndebele is a fully remote working Virtual Consultant Psychiatrist, Digital Innovation Lead Mental Health at Solent NHS Trust and Clinical Lead for Neurodiversity Pathways, HIOW.

An NHS consultant psychiatrist since 2003, she has extensive clinical experience and has worked in a variety of settings. Prior to her current role she worked for over 10 years as a consultant psychiatrist in psychiatric intensive care (PICU).  She is among the first consultant psychiatrists to pioneer 100% remote working in the NHS and is excited to contribute to the development of this innovative role which includes digital remote clinical assessments in community general adult mental health and early intervention in psychosis, virtual clinical and educational supervision of postgraduate doctors, teaching, and research.

She is a digital health enthusiast, interested in exploring and developing flexible, novel ways of working in mental health supported by technology as well as contributing to projects that promote staff wellbeing.

Faith became DPSIG Chair in June 2024.

Iain currently works as a General Adult Registrar in Oxford, he also acts as a medical advisor and member of the clinical safety group for Thalamos LTD; a software company that have digitised the Mental Health Act process. Iain is a Member of the faculty of Clinical Informatics and has an interest in the use of data and digital clinical safety with the emergence of new software, electronic health records and telepsychiatry.

Iain brings the Digital Psychiatry Special Interest Group several different perspectives on informatics in Psychiatry;  the view of the trainee, the independent developer and the Clinical Safety Officer. Iain has represented the Digital Psychiatry SIG at the NHSX Digital Clinical Safety Strategy Consultation workshops to guide the future direction of digital applications in healthcare.

Dr Mariana Pinto da Costa (MD, MSc, PhD) is a clinical academic with expertise in Digital Mental Health, Global Mental Health and Medical Education. In her doctoral research, she explored the views of different stakeholders (mental health professionals, volunteers and patients) about the potential of social relationships between people with severe mental illness and volunteers through different formats (face-to-face or using technology) in different European countries.

She developed a new digital volunteering intervention - the Phone Pal - that connects patients and volunteers in the community through smart-phones, which she tested in a trial. She was nominated by Columbia University as one of the Top 100 Innovative Women Leaders in Global Mental Health.

She also has clinical and research experience in Africa, where she was screening alcohol, smoking and other substances involvement, in primary and mental health care users in Luanda, while studying for the International Master on Mental Health Policy and Services at the New University of Lisbon supported by the WHO.

She is past president of the European Federation of Psychiatric trainees (EFPT), and has been the Chief Investigator and study manager of the Brain Drain Study, researching mobility experiences of psychiatric trainees in 33 European countries. 

Shivani is currently a CAMHS Specialist Registrar at South London and the Maudsley. Her special interest includes medical education and digital health.

Shivani has been involved in organising several digital Psychiatry events including the HackMentalHealth San Francisco Hackathon, and the Digital Innovation in Mental Health Conference. Shivani has extensive medical education experience and has completed an MSc in Medical Education at UCL.

Bijal Sangoi is a Speciality Registrar in Forensic Psychiatry and an honorary Psychiatry Teaching Tutor for HEE West Midlands Post Graduate School of Psychiatry.

Working in psychiatry for eight years, Bijal is an IMG working in the UK since 2019. Her interests include promoting psychiatry, creating awareness about mental health inequalities and medical education. 

Outside of work, she is enthusiastic about travelling, and also has a keen interest in writing and reading all things fiction or non-fiction. In her own words, “I am relatively new to the world of digital psychiatry, but enjoying every moment of it while learning so many fantastic and geeky aspects of digital technology along the way.”

Maria is a patient representative on the DPSIG executive committee. 

Lia is a doctor and digital health strategist with extensive experience across the spectrum of digital healthcare. She believes that delivery of exemplary healthcare requires a holistic, biopsychosocial, service design approach. She has done this via transformation roles in the NHS (frontline and at the centre for NHS England), charities & for-profit sector including start-up advisory and commercial roles as Head of Mental Health and Long Term Conditions Strategy, Chief Safety Officer and Chief Clinical Innovation Officer.

Lia is enrolled on an MSc in Healthcare and Design run by Imperial College and the Royal College of Arts. She is a fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics and a member of the RCPsych Informatics Committee and the Shuri Network. She currently serves on the Digital Health Network’s CCIO advisory panel.

Clinically she is a dual qualified general adult and old age psychiatrist with liaison psychiatry accreditation currently working in liaison neuropsychiatry for the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. At NHS England she led clinically on the NHSx Digital Playbook for Mental Health and is involved in several other national digital transformation pieces of work.

Lia is passionate about ethics and safety by design, patient-centred care and long-term conditions including mental health and has particular interests in integrated care, medical education and addressing health inequalities. 

Dr Bachlani works as Consultant Psychiatrist at Priory Woking Hospital and is Clinical Lead for the Woking Priory Neurodevelopmental disorder pathway. 
 
Asif is also an Associate Non-Executive Director (NED) for Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust with his portfolios being data, digital and quality. 
 
Since being a consultant, Asif has an interest in data, digital and informatics.  Using data about the local population and QI methodology, Asif, has developed patient pathways including the NELFT Acute Care Pathway, North East London Transition Pathway and Kingston Personality Disorder Pathway tailored to meet the local population needs.  
 
Asif has also had an interest in using digital innovations and used the Alive-Cor 1L ECG as part of Health Foundation QI award (2016) for his project ‘Improving Physical Health care for patients with psychosis’ which delivered Lester cardiometabolic physical health checks for people with psychosis in collaboration with community pharmacies in NE London.
 
Due to his interest in mental health outcomes and clinical application of data,  Asif was Clinical Lead for Mental Health Outcomes for 2 London based Mental Health trusts (SWLSTG/NELFT) as well as the NHS London Clinical Lead for Mental Health Outcomes for 2 years, between 2017-19.
 
Whilst Priory National Clinical Director (2020-22), Asif developed ward level clinician data dashboards within the 25 Acute Priory hospitals based on quality patient pathways. In order to reduce admin burden on clinicians and improve quality within the electronic patient records, Asif developed structured digital templates including admission, ward round and care planning as well as discharge summary.  
 
Asif passionately believes in the value of data for clinicians and organised the first ever data events for clinicians: South London Partnership and the London Cavendish Square Group benchmarking conferences in 2018 as well as been Lead Organiser for RCPsych Better Data, Better Care conference and seminar series since 2019 with the 4th annual conference in April 2023.  
 
Asif is also active within the RCPsych and is the Treasurer and Comms Lead for the General Adult Faculty, is a committee member of Digital SIG and is co-chair for the RCPsych Digital Literacy Standards Task Force for current and future psychiatrists.  Asif is the RCPsych Representative on the Mental Health Steering Group of the NHS Benchmarking Network.

Dr Amit Bansal is a General Adult ST6 Psychiatrist in East London Foundation Trust. 

He has worked on a number of innovation projects in post. Most recently this has involved automation of upload of Clozapine results to a collaborative platform for more easy access. He has an interest in user design that is currently being developed as part of an Msc program at UCL and is currently exploring how to improve digital literacy within his current organisation as part of a Quality improvement initiative. Amit has a combination of some technical skills and an interest in user experience that he hopes to bring together in various forms through implementation of various digital technologies. 

Dr Romayne Gadelrab was one of two founding chairs of the Digital SIG and remains on the executive committee.

Romayne is an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, and a Clinical Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, Kings College London. Romayne is interested in the effects of technology on our mental health.

Following her Maudsley psychiatry training, she studied Innovation at the Elisava School of Design, Barcelona and is keen to see the integration of new technologies in mental health. She also works as an honorary Doctor at the National Centre for Gaming Disorders with a special interest in problematic use of the internet and gaming. 

George is an Academic Clinical Fellow at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and the IoPPN, King’s College London. He has a research interest in digital phenotyping, which he has previously investigated at Oxford University’s Department of Psychiatry, where he remains an Honorary Member.

He holds a Topol Digital Health Fellowship, providing healthcare professionals with training to lead digital health innovations. George also has a keen interest in public engagement and has previously served for the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Public Education Editorial Board.

Dr Zain Hussain is an Academic Core Psychiatry Trainee (CT1) in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, and an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He was previously a Foundation Fellow for the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2020-22).

He is an aspiring clinical academic and aims to work at the intersection of data science, digital technologies and psychiatry. He is particularly interested in risk prediction models, and the use of natural language processing (for digital phenotyping, and social media analysis). He has published his work in a number of journals, including eClinical Medicine, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, Journal of Medical Internet Research and BMJ Open. 

In 2018, he was the joint winner of the 'Public Health Product Forge' Hackathon, where he formed the team ‘Docmetrics’ and developed a data analytics tool for General Practice. In 2019, he received the Palliative Care Section Research Prize from the Royal Society of Medicine, for his work on predicting patient prognosis in critical care using artificial neural networks.

In 2020, he worked as an Honorary Clinical Research Fellow as part of a team at the University of Edinburgh, to develop a novel Artificial Intelligence powered dashboard for COVID-19-related public sentiment and opinion mining in social media platforms, for informing national policy considerations. More recently, he was awarded the NIHR Mental Health TRC and Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Taster Award in 2022, as part of which he completed a short placement at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford.

He also has a keen interest in medical education and is an Associate Faculty Member of the Clinical Educator Programme at the University of Edinburgh. He supervises research projects for Year 1 MBChB students, which are focussed on the use of digital technologies in healthcare.

David Rigby was one of two founding co-chairs of the Digital SIG and now remains on the executive committee.

He is an ST7 in General Adult and Older Adult Psychiatry currently working in Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Trust. He has a Postgraduate Diploma in Medical Education and used to be the Mentoring Lead for East and North East London NHS Foundation Trust.

Outside of work, David is a keen gamer and VR enthusiast. He is the co-founder of PsychTech, a yearly conference on the theme of technology and mental health.

Read more about plans for DPSIG

Read the Digital Psychiatry Special Interest Group proposal.

Contact us

If you have any enquiries about the Digital Psychiatry SIG please contact sigs@rcpsych.ac.uk.

Read more to receive further information regarding a career in psychiatry
Dr Iain Grant, interim Chair