Artificial intelligence in psychiatry: innovation, ethics, and impact

Dr Louis Ereve is a Sydney based psychiatrist registered with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP). He studied medicine at the University of Sydney. Prior to this, he attained a combined degree of software engineering (first class honours) and medical science, also at the University of Sydney. He has industry experience applying his software engineering skills in an corporate setting prior to commencing his medical career.

Dr Ereve has had an ongoing interest in the interaction of information technology and health, as evidenced by these past activities:

• Completing majors in bioinformatics as part of his tertiary education
• Attaining a certificate in AI and ethics from the London School of Economics and Political Science
• Prior to his medical career, presenting an engineering thesis on automation of ectopic beat detection, with a self made program that detected ectopic beat events in 24 hour ECG recordings.
• Completing a psychiatry training scholarly project on comparing the rates of medication errors before and after the migration of medication charts from paper to an electronic system.

In 2024 Dr Ereve formed AI4Psychs, a group of psychiatrists with an interest in artificial intelligence and it’s implications for psychiatry. The group maintains a forum for discussion and reflection of hopes as well as concerns about psychiatry in the age of artificial intelligence, as well as a peer review group that is registered with RANZCP. In the areas of Artificial intelligence and medicine, Dr Ereve’s interests include advocating for improved standards and protection of human rights, fostering connection, facilitating reflective work and encouraged peer reviewed best practice.

The group has additional interests in the areas of data collection and research. Dr Ereve is a general adult psychiatrist who was admitted in 2020. Since then he has worked in both public and private mental health settings. He is currently based in Sydney, Australia and works in private settings with interests in the areas of trauma, ADHD, early age psychosis, depression, anxiety and work place injury. He can be contacted on drlouisereve@gmail.com.

Lena has more than 20 years’ experience working in the public and private hospital systems, coming from managing private sleep and respiratory clinics.

She has been with Avant for 5 years, and has managed the Billings+ and VoiceBox teams along with the launch of Avant’s first AI product in VoiceBox Scribe. Lena loves to help provide practices and doctors with solutions that optimise how they can provide care to the community.

Georgie Haysom is a health lawyer and General Manager of Advocacy, Education and Research at medical indemnity provider Avant.  

She has worked in health law for 30 years, assisting, advising and educating doctors on a wide range of medico-legal issues, including several years representing doctors in medical negligence litigation. She has worked in advocacy and public policy for the past 12 years and has led Avant’s work on AI and medico-legal risk over the last 18 months.
 

Martin is a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and the Institute of Digital Health. He has 25 years + of experience in healthcare technology leadership, academia, innovation, strategy, and governance.

He has been involved in multiple digital health developments across all clinical specialties and has an interest in how to best provide empowering strengths-based services to isolated, confined, underserved and extreme environments from the outback to outer space.

He helped lead the development of New Zealand's first Telepsychiatry service and was a Clinical Advisor for the NZ National Depression Initiative integrated digital services platform and e-learning Journal.  He was the establishment Clinic Director for the NZ National Institute of Health Innovation, and one of the first and longest-serving District Health Board Clinical Directors of Information Services.

He has a long-standing interest in cybersecurity and previously helped establish and Chair the Information Systems Security forum for the NZ Northern Region. In addition to his clinical qualifications, he holds both a Master's degree and a Doctorate of Business Administration, both of which had a technology innovation and implementation focus. His interest in Digital Health encompasses a range of current and emergent technologies and concepts including blended reality, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital consciousness, lived experience, formulation, guardians, trauma, nightmares, mind cybersecurity and the therapeutic revision of memory.

He has a clinical interest in trauma and sleep (particularly nightmares and insomnia).  He is currently completing a further Doctorate (DHSc.) at Auckland University of Technology focusing on sleep, AI and suicide prevention.