The psychedelic industry has no shortage of drug developers, clinical trials or investment pitches.
What it has less of is the machinery needed to make psychedelic treatments work as healthcare.
Elephant Gate, the accelerator launched by venture builder Pink Elephant, has made that gap the focus of its inaugural cohort. Announced on August 26, the six companies selected for Cohort 1 are working across reimbursement, screening, continuity of care, neurofeedback, clinical trials and psychedelic education.
The six-month programme will culminate in a Demo Day in San Francisco on January 11, 2027, alongside the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
There is no new psychedelic compound in the group.
Instead, these companies are going after some of the problems that become obvious once a treatment has to leave the clinical trial and enter an actual healthcare system.
HealingMaps wants clinics to pay less and collect more
HealingMaps is focused on a problem that is familiar across healthcare: independent clinics often pay more for services and supplies than larger organisations, while getting paid by insurers can be difficult.
Founded by Cory Jones and Mark G., the company began as a directory for psychedelic treatment providers but has moved into the business side of running those clinics.
Its Healing Health Alliance, developed with Advanced Behavioral Strategies, is a group purchasing organisation for ketamine, psychedelic medicine and TMS clinics.
The idea is simple. Bring enough independent providers together and they gain some of the purchasing power of a larger healthcare organisation.
Elephant Gate says HealingMaps is also working on the problem of collecting insurance reimbursement for treatments, with the aim of doing so without forcing clinics to change the way they operate.
For a sector that still relies heavily on small and independent providers, the economics of running those businesses could become just as important as the clinical economics of the treatments themselves.
Safar is trying to stop patients disappearing between sessions
Safar is looking at what happens after the appointment ends.
The company, founded by Sabba Nazhand and Zach Walker, describes itself as a continuity-of-care platform for psychedelic therapy and integration.
Its starting point is a familiar problem in mental healthcare. Elephant Gate cites a figure of one in four clients dropping out of therapy prematurely, with disengagement between sessions a significant part of the problem.
Safar is designed to keep patients engaged between appointments while giving practitioners a better picture of what is happening during that period.
It also aims to measure outcomes across the full course of care rather than treating each appointment as an isolated event.
That could be particularly relevant to psychedelic therapy, where preparation and integration sit on either side of a treatment that may involve only a small number of dosing sessions.
The company is effectively betting that there is more to continuity of care than booking the next appointment.
Homecoming sees money in psychological screening
Homecoming has perhaps the clearest financial proposition in the cohort.
Founded by Yuriy Blokhin, the company provides tools for psychedelic and integrative practitioners alongside psychological screening for psychedelic therapy.
The pitch is that screening does not have to be an unreimbursed administrative cost.
According to Elephant Gate, Homecoming’s screening service can generate $500 to $1,000 per patient in insurance claims, using standard CPT codes.
That is a significant claim in a sector where the cost of psychedelic treatment is frequently discussed, but the economics of everything that happens before treatment receive far less attention.
Screening is necessary before a patient can be cleared for treatment. If providers can turn part of that clinical assessment into a reimbursable service, it changes the economics of the patient journey before a dosing session has even taken place.
Homecoming has also made its medical screening service available through the National Psychedelics Association.
Of the companies in the cohort, it is one of the clearest examples of the emerging psychedelic industry trying to fit itself into existing healthcare payment systems rather than waiting for an entirely new reimbursement model.
Psio wants to extend treatment into the home
Psio is taking a more experimental approach.
Founded by Devin Effinger, PhD, James Blackwell and Anna Desmarais, BSN, RN, HWNC-BC, the company is using EEG brainwave data to develop personalised at-home neurofeedback and remote support.
The stated aim is to extend psychedelic care beyond the medicine session, using the period following treatment to support integration and potentially strengthen outcomes.
The underlying idea is that the psychedelic session itself may be only one part of a longer period of change.
Psio is attempting to use physiological data to personalise what happens afterwards.
There is a considerable evidentiary hurdle here. EEG is an established technology, but establishing that EEG-informed neurofeedback actually improves outcomes following psychedelic treatment is a different proposition.
That makes Psio one of the more experimental companies in the cohort, but also one of the more interesting to watch as research into psychedelic treatment moves towards questions of biomarkers and personalised care.
VistaraOS is going after clinical trial recruitment
VistaraOS is perhaps the easiest company in the cohort to mischaracterise.
Its pitch is not simply to provide another piece of software for psychedelic clinics.
The company, founded by Pranay Gupta and Prakhar Gupta, is focused on a problem that can make or break drug development programmes: getting the right participants into clinical trials and keeping them on protocol.
Elephant Gate says VistaraOS finds, screens and schedules participants itself, while keeping every visit on protocol.
That puts the company closer to the clinical development side of the psychedelic industry than the consumer-facing treatment market.
Trial recruitment is an expensive and persistent problem in drug development. For psychedelic trials, the requirements around patient eligibility can make recruitment even more challenging.
A company that can reduce the time and cost required to identify suitable participants has an obvious commercial proposition, particularly as more psychedelic and mental health compounds move through clinical development.
Psychedelic Stewardship is focused on the experience itself
The final company in the cohort is doing something rather different.
Psychedelic Stewardship, founded by Sara Gael, provides education and resources intended to help people navigate psychedelic experiences and translate meaningful experiences into longer-term change.
Gael has spent years working in psychedelic harm reduction, education and clinical research, including through the Zendo Project.
Her inclusion in the cohort reflects a part of psychedelic medicine that can be easy to lose as the industry becomes more clinical.
A psychedelic treatment is not simply a pharmaceutical intervention. Patients still need to understand what they are entering into, know how to navigate difficult experiences and have some framework for making sense of what happens afterwards.
As the industry becomes more regulated, that human element is likely to become more structured rather than disappear.
A different kind of psychedelic startup cohort
Taken together, the six companies offer a useful snapshot of the practical problems emerging around psychedelic medicine as the sector moves beyond drug discovery and towards real-world delivery. HealingMaps is focused on the economics of independent clinics, while Safar is addressing the challenge of keeping patients engaged between appointments. Homecoming is attempting to make psychological screening a reimbursable part of care, and Psio is exploring whether neurofeedback can extend the benefits of treatment beyond the dosing session. VistaraOS is working on clinical trial recruitment and adherence, while Psychedelic Stewardship is focused on education, harm reduction and helping people make sense of psychedelic experiences.
The companies are not solving the same problem, and several are still early enough that their propositions will need to be tested in practice. Their selection nevertheless points to a shift in the industry’s priorities. For years, psychedelic companies could centre their stories on the drug itself: efficacy, safety, neurobiology and the prospect of regulatory approval. As these treatments move closer to real-world use, however, a different set of questions becomes harder to avoid. Who pays for the assessment? How does a clinic build a sustainable business? How do providers keep patients engaged between sessions? How can trial participants be recruited quickly and kept on protocol? What happens after a patient returns home, and what support is available when the immediate treatment experience is over?
Those questions may be less exciting than the prospect of a breakthrough molecule, but they are likely to determine whether psychedelic treatments can function as viable healthcare services rather than remain confined to research settings and specialist clinics. Elephant Gate’s first cohort is built around the idea that solving these operational, financial and clinical problems could create some of the sector’s most durable businesses.
