From Evidence to Practice
Over 50 randomized controlled trials support ketamine for depression. The challenge is no longer whether it works, but how to deliver it safely, accessibly, and at scale. Drawing on eight years of building treatment programs in both private and public settings, this talk covers the practical realities of implementation: training clinicians, designing treatment protocols, navigating off-label regulation, and making the case to hospital administrators who have never heard of ketamine for anything other than anesthesia.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy requires infrastructure that most healthcare systems do not have: treatment rooms designed for extended sessions, protocols that integrate pharmacology and psychotherapy, trained personnel who can hold both roles, and economic models that sustain the practice.
I have built this infrastructure twice: first at Insight Ketamine in Santa Fe (2016), then at Axonklinikken in Oslo and Trondheim (2018-present). Along the way we developed a partner model where trained psychologists deliver therapy while we handle medical screening and ketamine administration, achieving 89% margins and reaching patients across Norway.
This talk is operational: clinic design, staffing models, protocol standardisation, quality assurance, and the economics of scaling psychedelic-assisted therapy within and alongside public healthcare systems.
