Introduction.

When Thomas Insel announced last year that he was stepping down from his position as director of the National Institute of Mental Health to join Google Life Sciences, some surprise was expressed by my colleagues. Typically, their thinking was that individuals in his position would (should?) return to academia or perhaps work at a pharmaceutical firm developing new therapeutics. As someone familiar with both psychiatry and the technology field, I thought Dr Insel's decision was quite rational given the increasing overlap between both fields and that his move reflected this new paradigm.