Objective

To describe the technical development of an asynchronous telepsychiatry application, the Psychiatric Video Archiving and Communication System.

Methods

A client-server application was developed in Visual Basic.Net with Microsoft® SQL database as the backend. It includes the capability of storing video-recorded psychiatric interviews and manages the workflow of the system with automated messaging.

Results

Psychiatric Video Archiving and Communication System has been used to conduct the first ever series of asynchronous telepsychiatry consultations worldwide. A review of the software application and the process as part of this project has led to a number of improvements that are being implemented in the next version, which is being written in Java.

Conclusions

This is the first description of the use of video recorded data in an asynchronous telemedicine application. Primary care providers and consulting psychiatrists have found it easy to work with and a valuable resource to increase the availability of psychiatric consultation in remote rural locations.