This week on PopHealth Week, we deliver a special edition broadcast with a pulse on the evolving landscape of behavioral health, digital infrastructure, and psychedelic science. I’m joined by my friend and fellow Healthcare NOW Radio host, Jim Tate, host of Healthcare NOW Radio’s Tate Chronicles, to preview what’s ahead at the MAPS 2025 Psychedelic Science Conference, taking place June 16–20 in Denver, Colorado.
Together, we take a look at how psychedelic-assisted therapy, long stuck in the policy margins, is now stepping into the clinical mainstream—with digital health playing a critical enabling role.
Jim is widely respected as a national expert in health IT, regulatory compliance, and EHR certification—his insights come with the wisdom of a seasoned healthcare technologist and the curiosity of someone tracking paradigm shifts as they happen.
The Reawakening of Psychedelic Medicine
Once maligned, now somewhat ‘mainstreamed’ into evidence-based medicine —psychedelic-assisted therapy is in a renaissance moment. Compounds like psilocybin and MDMA are inching toward FDA approval, driven by mounting evidence in a range of clinical trials studying the treatment of PTSD, anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders.
The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has been at the center of this movement for over three decades. Founded in 1986 by Rick Doblin, PhD, MAPS has funded clinical research, sponsored regulatory trials, and built a multidisciplinary community advocating for a more compassionate, integrated model of mental healthcare.
Their 2023 conference drew over 12,000 attendees and featured everyone from medical professionals and neuroscientists to Indigenous elders and mental health advocates. In 2025, expectations are even higher.
Psychedelics Meet Population Health
At PopHealth Week, we’re always looking at the eco-systems-level view. What excites me about this convergence is how psychedelic therapy might reshape legacy behavioral health delivery—especially for populations most at risk or otherwise disadvantaged.
Jim and I tease out the role that digital infrastructure, from EHR integration to patient monitoring tools, will play in normalizing these therapies across community-based mental health networks. With more than 20% of U.S. adults experiencing a mental illness each year, new models are desperately needed.
🔗 NIMH Mental Illness Statistics
If psychedelics are to have broad public health impact, they must move beyond ‘boutique retreats‘ for the worried well and into federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), Medicaid networks, and safety-net systems. That’s where IT leaders like Jim are sounding the alarm: We must build the clinical pathways and documentation frameworks now—or risk creating new disparities.
Regulatory Winds Are Shifting
One of the big headlines heading into MAPS 2025 is the regulatory momentum.
In 2024, the FDA designated MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD as a breakthrough treatment. Phase 3 trial data submitted by MAPS Public Benefit Corporation showed that 67% of participants no longer qualified for PTSD after three sessions. An approval decision is expected by late 2025.
As of June 13, 2025, the FDA has not approved MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. In August 2024, the FDA declined approval, citing ‘insufficient evidence’ of efficacy and safety, and requested an additional Phase 3 trial from Lykos Therapeutics to further study the treatment. This followed a June 2024 advisory committee vote against recommending approval due to concerns about study design, potential bias, unblinding issues, and inadequate side effect reporting. Lykos Therapeutics has expressed disappointment and plans to request reconsideration, arguing that existing data from two Phase 3 trials (MAPP1 and MAPP2) showed significant reductions in PTSD symptoms, with 67% of participants no longer meeting PTSD criteria after three sessions. The treatment remains a Schedule I drug, and no new approval decision has been reported by this date.
Meanwhile, Oregon and Colorado are leading state-level experiments with psilocybin service centers, while California is revisiting decriminalization policies.
Oregon became the first U.S. state to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use through Measure 109, passed in November 2020, establishing a regulatory framework for psilocybin service centers. The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) began issuing licenses in January 2023, with the first service center, EPIC Healing Eugene, opening in June 2023. As of September 2023, OHA had granted six service center licenses and 49 facilitator licenses, with 17 service centers and over 540 facilitators licensed by November 2023. These centers provide supervised psilocybin sessions for adults over 21, focusing on mental health conditions like depression and PTSD, without requiring a prescription.
While Colorado voters approved Proposition 122 (Natural Medicine Health Act) in November 2022, decriminalizing personal use of psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, ibogaine, and mescaline (excluding peyote) for adults over 21 and establishing a regulated framework for “healing centers.” The state’s Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) is tasked with developing regulations, with licensing applications for facilitators and healing centers expected to begin in late 2024 and the program launching in 2025. The Natural Medicine Advisory Board is advising on implementation, with potential expansion to other psychedelics after June 2026.
Still, federal scheduling of psychedelics remains a bottleneck. These compounds remain Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act, despite growing evidence of their therapeutic use.
Will 2025 be the year that policy catches up with science? That’s one of the key questions we’ll explore on-site at MAPS.
Health IT’s Role in Integration
Jim Tate brings a pragmatic eye to innovation. As host of The Tate Chronicles, he’s interviewed some of the nation’s leading voices in healthcare transformation. In our conversation, he outlined the three digital hurdles psychedelic therapies must overcome:
- Standardization of documentation – Without consistent data capture and outcome reporting, it will be impossible to scale psychedelic therapy through payers or CMS programs.
- Privacy and informed consent – The therapeutic experience is intensely personal. New safeguards must be built into patient record systems to protect confidentiality while allowing appropriate care coordination.
- Credentialing and workflow support – Clinicians administering these therapies often operate in multidisciplinary teams. That model demands new billing codes, scheduling tools, and supervision documentation—all of which must flow through existing EHR platforms.
Without solving for those, psychedelic therapies will struggle to gain adoption beyond self-pay models.
Equity, Access, and the New Frontier of Mental Health
Let’s be clear: The excitement around psychedelics cannot come at the expense of equity and access. For communities long underserved by the mental health system—particularly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color—the risks of exclusion are real.
MAPS and other stakeholders are making efforts to center Indigenous knowledge, cultural humility, and community-based models in the rollout of these therapies. But these values must be built into every layer: from who gets trained, to who gets reimbursed, to who can access the care.
This is where public health and population health must lead—not follow. And it’s where storytellers, broadcasters, and producers like us have a role to play.
Final Thoughts from the Road to Denver
As we preview MAPS 2025, a few reflections stand out:
- The science is compelling, but regulatory clarity is key.
- The infrastructure is lagging, and IT must catch up.
- The equity stakes are high and require more than good intentions.
Psychedelics may not be a panacea, but they represent a generational opportunity to rethink how we treat trauma, addiction, and depression—conditions that have long strained the U.S. healthcare system with inadequate solutions.
We’ll be covering the event live from Denver with interviews, media drops, and reflections from the field. Tune in at HealthcareNOWRadio.com or follow our real-time coverage at @PopHealthWeek.
And to Jim Tate—thank you for lending your voice, your insight, and your decades of experience. We’re proud to collaborate with you and the entire Healthcare NOW Radio community.
🎧 Listen to the Episode
“Previewing MAPS 2025: A Special Edition with Jim Tate”
🎙️ PopHealth Week – Streaming on Healthcare NOW Radio Weekdays: 5:30am, 1:30pm and 9:30pm ET
📅 Airing: June 19th 2025
🔗 Listen on Healthcare NOW Radio
🔗 Sources & References
- MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference – https://maps.org/psychedelic-science-2025
- NIMH Mental Health Statistics – https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness
- FDA MDMA Breakthrough Therapy – https://www.fda.gov
- Health IT Analytics on Psychedelic EHR Barriers – https://healthitanalytics.com
- Chacruna Institute on Psychedelic Justice – Chacruna Institute on Psychedelic Justice – https://chacruna.net/psychedelic-justice-center/
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This is such a thoughtful article — I especially appreciated the way you connected the science with real-world experiences. In my own exploration of the field, I’ve found that people often struggle to bridge research with personal integration. That’s one of the reasons I started collecting resources at https://psychedelicsphere.com, where I’ve been curating articles and guides on responsible use, microdosing, and integration practices. I think it complements what you’ve shared here really well, and I’d love to hear what others think about balancing the clinical side of psychedelics with the lived experience.
Thanks Alex! Will check out your site. Meanwhile we’re publishing the podcast series ‘Inside the Revival’ on Healthcare NOW Radio’s podcast network here: https://www.healthcarenowradio.com/programs/inside-the-revival/ We also publish the Chronicles of Kykeon substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/kykeon23/p/an-open-letter-to-psychedelic-journalists?r=1vx7rt&utm_medium=ios