David is a psychiatrist who has spent the last 23 years leading development of primary/community mental health and addiction (MH&A) services in Aotearoa/NZ.
His longstanding interest and involvement in early intervention services for MH&A needs, and population level solutions to meeting these needs, inevitably lead him to become involved in exploring digital solutions from the late 1990’s on. Early involvement in the field included supporting implementation of a telepsychiatry service, and membership of the sector reference group to the National Depression Initiative (the programme which implemented and evaluated a population mental health promotion, and development of a digital “brief problem solving” intervention).
His interest and involvement in the digital solutions field has continued to the present; he has for the past 7 years been lead psychiatrist to the National Telehealth Service, and is also a clinical advisor to the team at GROOV. He is also currently involved in a number of initiatives implementing use of AI tools in the MH&A field.