Pioneering Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy in Australia

Emyria (ASX: EMD) delivers psychiatrist-led, psychedelic-assisted therapy for PTSD and treatment-resistant depression through its network of Empax Centres. Australia is the only country to have rescheduled MDMA and psilocybin for authorised psychiatric use, and Emyria is leading the national clinical delivery of these treatments.

The company operates Empax Centres across Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria. It was the first organisation in Australia to deliver psychedelic-assisted therapy funded by Medibank, the country’s largest private health insurer with over 4.2 million customers.

Early clinical outcomes have been compelling. Among the first cohort of PTSD patients at six months, the majority no longer met diagnostic criteria for PTSD, with Quality of Life scores improving by more than 120%.

A New Treatment Pathway Without Playbook

Psychedelic-assisted therapy is fundamentally different from conventional mental health services. It combines psychiatrist oversight, specialist therapists, structured preparation and integration sessions, supervised dosing in licensed hospital settings, and longitudinal follow-up.

When Emyria began building the Empax model, there was no established operational blueprint. Clinical workflows, data structures and reporting requirements were being defined in real time.

The organisation faced several structural challenges:

• Designing, testing and refining a new care model with clinical governance, ethics and regulatory compliance embedded from day one.

• Capturing intensive, longitudinal data to generate real-world evidence, optimise protocols and demonstrate value to insurers.

• Coordinating multiple stakeholders, including psychiatrists, therapists, hospital partners, insurers and regulators

• Liaising with an independent academic evaluation team led by Professor Paul Fitzgerald at the Australian National University.

• Scaling geographically from a single Perth clinic to multiple states, each with distinct partner organisations and workforce configurations.

• Demonstrating economic viability to private insurers and government funders such as the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

Emyria required a platform flexible enough to support a treatment pathway still being written, and scalable enough to underpin national growth.

“We are building an entirely new care pathway and there are no off-the-shelf systems designed for psychedelic-assisted therapy. What we needed was a platform that could evolve with us as we learned, rather than one that locked us into somebody else's idea of how mental healthcare should work.” Michael Winlo, CEO, Emyria

Tacklit: A Platform That Learns as You Scale

Emyria selected Tacklit as the care delivery platform for its Empax Centres because it could be configured around a novel clinical model rather than forcing that model into rigid system constraints.

Tacklit enabled Emyria to build and iterate in real time. The initial clinical model developed in Perth was progressively refined as experience grew, with adjustments to scheduling structures, clinical documentation, outcome measures and reporting dashboards. The platform evolved alongside the service.

Key capabilities included:

• Configurable clinical workflows supporting multi-session treatment journeys, preparation and integration appointments, supervised dosing and structured follow-up.

• Embedded outcome measurement using validated tools including PCL-5 for PTSD severity and ReQoL-210 for quality of life, WHODAS and QIDS-SR16; all captured at defined intervals to demonstrate clinical effectiveness.

• Real-time operational dashboards providing visibility across patient flow, clinician utilisation, treatment capacity and waitlist management.

• Multi-site architecture enabling consistent deployment of the Empax model across sites and states, without rebuilding workflows.

• Longitudinal data capture supporting academic evaluation, insurer reporting and protocol refinement.

Tacklit became a living system within Emyria’s operating model. As protocols evolved, new centres opened and funding requirements expanded, the platform adapted accordingly.

Empax Centres are designed for healing. They feature purpose-built spaces to enhance comfort, safety and therapy outcomes.

A Flexible Foundation for National Growth

The outcomes for Emyria have been compelling:

Clinical confidence at scale. Standardised yet configurable workflows ensure consistent delivery of care across Empax Centres, while accommodating local partner requirements and evolving clinical evidence.

Faster site deployment. New centres can be launched with pre-defined clinical templates, scheduling models, outcome frameworks and reporting structures already embedded in the platform.

A credible evidence base for funders. Consistent, structured data capture has strengthened Emyria’s funding case. Medibank’s expanded agreement, now covering eligible customers in Victoria in addition to Western Australia and Queensland, reflects confidence in both outcomes and operational rigour.

Continuous learning. The ability to capture real-world clinical data, analyse it and refine treatment protocols is central to Emyria’s competitive advantage. Tacklit provides the infrastructure that enables this feedback loop at scale.

“Tacklit let us design complex, multi-event care pathways as templates, which meant we could get new sites operational quickly with consistent scheduling from day one. Sending consents and assessments to patients ahead of appointments kept our data complete which has been critical as we build the real-world evidence base that insurers and funders need to see." Michael Winlo, CEO, Emyria

About Tacklit

Tacklit is purpose-built for mental and behavioural healthcare providers.

For organisations developing new models of care, Tacklit delivers the flexibility to design and refine workflows, the data architecture required to demonstrate outcomes, and the scalability to grow from a single site to a national network.

Learn more about the pioneering work of the Empax centre on their website: https://www.empaxcentre.com/