Medical and nursing staff in acute specialities spend up to 25% of their working lives collecting, analysing, using and communicating information (Audit Commission, 1995). It is likely that staff delivering mental health care, which often involves services and staff based in a number of locations and inter-agency collaboration, spend just as much of their time on these activities.

Healthcare organisations are currently in the midst of a period of fundamental change. Mental health services in particular have moved away from institutional care towards a complex inter-related community health social and voluntary model of service delivery, involving a diverse range of care professionals and commissioners.

Formal care plans extend the functions of traditional psychiatric case assessments by specifying more of the operational details of case management practice. They usually include descriptions of case management problems and objectives, the planned case management interventions, and who is involved in providing care.

Mental health care is a complex undertaking. It involves care providers of many disciplines, administrative support staff, managers, funding bodies and of course carers and patients themselves. Each group has their own information needs; each, however, is primarily concerned with other things, and the importance of minimising the effort involved in amassing and accessing dependably accurate information cannot be stressed too highly.