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Chapter 17 - Benefits and Risks of the Digital World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2025

Shermin Imran
Affiliation:
Greater Manchester NHS Foundation Trust
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Summary

Regardless of where you sit, digital is here to stay, and hiding from it won’t change that. Rather, understand it, learn, and accept the benefits and risks as inseparable entities. By understanding digital, we may just understand our patient a little more too. Stepping beyond the patient, and looking at it from a clinical perspective, the world of digital and its application to healthcare has so much more to offer. For mental health services in particular, there is a wide range of digital opportunities to support teams to work differently. This can range from apps, chatbots, online assessments, monitoring and therapies, virtual reality, virtual administration, electronic prescribing and much more. Obviously, it is paramount we consider issues such as safeguarding, cybersecurity and privacy, but the genie is out of the bottle and digital is here to stay!

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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