This year’s theme is Mental health: digital health and remote care. The pandemic left a legacy of creative and effective ways of providing care remotely, and increasingly we are using digital technologies and routinely collected data to support and inform the care we provide. We wanted the conference to provide an opportunity to reflect on the impact of such changes on primary care’s management of conditions, such as anxiety and depression.

There will be two keynotes: Professor Fiona Stevenson will present on ‘Achieving effective remote consultations for mental health concerns: the contributions of clinicians and patients’, and Professor Tony Kendrick will present preliminary findings from the REDUCE (REviewing long term anti-Depressant use by Careful monitoring in Everyday practice) programme.

Presentations will cover topics including:

• the benefits and challenges of remote consultations;
• the use of electronic, digital, and behavioural interventions;
• analysis and linkage of datasets to inform care.

Professor Katrina Turner, Professor of Primary Care Research, joint Head of the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol, and co-lead of Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC)’s Special Interest Group for mental health said: “We are really excited about bringing together colleagues from across the UK to discuss current and future research in the area of primary care mental health.

“For the last two years, the conference has been held online and this year we were keen to provide an opportunity for colleagues to meet in person. The response has been fantastic with over 30 abstracts submitted and already over 40 individuals registered to attend.

“We are very grateful to SAPC, who are supporting the conference. It’s been great pulling together such a fantastic programme with colleagues, Professor David Kessler, Professor Nicola Wiles and Dr Charlotte Archer.”

View the programme: PCMH Conference 2023 programme (Office document, 18kB)

The conference is now fully booked.