Population movements away from large cities and congestion in urban areas create problems for the delivery of psychiatric care which are compounded by the move towards greater care in the community. These developing service patterns require adequate methods of communication between service components. There is a proliferation of new technology offering opportunities for improved national and international communication in psychiatry as in other branches of medicine. It will be important to decide which technological innovations will improve the efficiency of service delivery rather than end up as expensive ‘gadgets’, or solutions looking for problems to solve. In this paper the use of interactive television in psychiatry is reviewed and the implications for the evaluation of new communications technology are discussed.