Welcome and Origins of Blossom
Lia Mix: Hello, everyone, and welcome. I’m Lia Mix, CEO of Delphi. Thank you for being here today. We’re joined by Floris Wolswijk, creator of Blossom, the most comprehensive database for psychedelic medicine research. Over the past seven and a half years, he has built Blossom into a leading resource for anyone who wants to understand what the psychedelic science actually says, from clinical trials and research papers to overview pages on compounds, conditions, and countries where things are moving.
Last year, Floris co-authored a 200-page report on psychedelics and reimbursement. He also recently relaunched Blossom with a new Road to Access hub that connects published evidence to the policy, regulatory, and economic questions that determine who actually gets treated. Alongside his research work, Floris has a background in psychology and works as a psychedelic facilitator, which keeps his work grounded in what matters at the point of care. It’s a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
Floris Wolswijk: Lia, thank you for the warm welcome. It’s great to be doing this session with you.
It’s been a long journey into the psychedelic field, and also a long journey rebuilding Blossom. I expect we’ll talk about both today.
Lia: Let’s start at the beginning. You’ve been tracking psychedelic research for more than seven years. What made you start Blossom, and what problem were you trying to solve?
Floris: I came to this partly from a personal place. I studied psychology and learned almost nothing about psychedelics. Maybe Carl Jung came up once, but that was about it. So Blossom began as a way to educate myself and understand the research more clearly.
At the time, and to some extent still now, there were two main ways to learn about psychedelics. One was through news coverage, which could be useful but also hype-driven. The other was to go directly to PubMed, Google Scholar, or the academic literature. For most people, that is too much to process. It was a lot even for me, despite having a psychology background and knowing people in the field.
I wanted to bridge those two worlds. At first, that meant understanding the research well enough to become a better facilitator and build a solid knowledge base. Over time, the question expanded: how do we move from research into policy and implementation? Most people can agree that the top-line results are promising. The real challenge is how to make that real in practice. That is also a large part of the work we now do at Delphi.
What Users Find on Blossom
Lia: That makes sense. You were trying to create a source of truth from scattered information. You recently relaunched the site to make it even more useful. What does someone encounter when they go to Blossom, and what prompted the rebuild?
Floris: If I had to summarize the experience in two words, it would be seeing clearly. The goal is to help people understand the research and what happens after research. That means working both at the individual level, with papers and trials, and at a higher level, with overview pages that let people step back and see the field more broadly.
I started with WordPress because it was familiar and easy to launch. But over time, I wanted the platform to do more. I kept patching things together, then started building with database tools and learning entirely new skills unrelated to psychology or psychedelics. The rebuilt site now lets us look at the data in many more ways.
Every individual page is accessible to everyone, and there is also a Pro version with deeper information. Even from the homepage, people can start searching. One major section is the research papers database. I track new research every day, and users can search by compound, condition, journal, stakeholder [an organization or actor involved in the field], and other filters. The point is not just to store papers, but to make them searchable through meaningful metadata [structured labels attached to each paper].
On each paper page, I try to summarize the study in one or two sentences using a consistent format: the type of study, how many people were included, and what it found. Users can then access the paper itself, the abstract, and a set of structured fields showing the study design and other key details. I also add my own editorial judgment about why a paper matters. Blossom does not include every psychedelic paper ever published. It is curated. Every clinical study should be there, but I am selective about what else gets added.
From Individual Papers to Structured Evidence
Floris: One area I’m developing now is extracting more detailed results from clinical studies so users can compare findings across trials. The first data are already there, including outcomes and some safety data. The initial scope is clinical studies in patient populations. Over time, that should make it easier to move from isolated papers to a more comparative view of evidence.
Blossom also has overview pages. For example, a page on 5-MeO-DMT [5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a short-acting psychedelic compound] can cover the history, pharmacology [how a drug acts in the body], safety profile, and current research landscape. A page on depression can pull together treatment-related information in a similar structure. I try to balance text with visuals and tables so that people can actually work with the information.
Users can also explore researcher profiles, measures used in studies, and geographic maps of where psychedelic research is taking place. Someone might use that as a researcher to see who is active in a particular area, or as a prospective participant to find recruiting studies nearby. And when you look at the broader map of research groups, it becomes very clear how much the field has expanded. In 2019, people mainly talked about Johns Hopkins and Imperial College. Now there are many more centers doing serious work.
I also have a public roadmap where people can request features, new visualizations, or other improvements. That is one of the changes I’m happiest with. It gives people a lightweight way to shape what gets built next.
From Research to Access
Lia: What stands out is that Blossom has evolved from a research platform into something much closer to lab-to-clinic translation. You also published that major reimbursement report. How are those developments shaping what you build now?
Floris: At a high level, I think of it as moving from research into translation. That means asking how training needs to happen for therapists, how stakeholders are organized, and what access looks like in specific countries. I am profiling countries where research is taking place in more detail, but also tracking psychedelic access more broadly. Where is ketamine available now? Where is MDMA-assisted therapy [therapy that combines psychotherapy with MDMA administration] possible? What may happen next?
The report we published a year ago focused on Europe. On Blossom, I’m rebuilding that information in a more dynamic and more global format. That largely means Europe and North America for now, though Australia and other regions matter too. I want the platform to show the sequence clearly:
• The clinical research
• The regulatory obstacles
• The reimbursement barriers
• The infrastructure that exists or is missing
• The stakeholders who need to work together
I want Blossom to remain stakeholder-agnostic. Whether someone is a student, policymaker, clinician, or advocate, they should be able to come in from their own angle and go as deep or as broad as they need.
The Road to Access and Country Scorecards
Lia: The road to access differs by jurisdiction, which makes that structure especially important. You now have a Road to Access section on Blossom. What is that section trying to accomplish?
Floris: It builds on the report, but the goal is to make it dynamic. A report is static. Blossom can be updated continuously. I want to add multiple lenses, keep information current, and track the moving parts, whether that means legislative developments in US states or new regulatory designations in Europe.
Another direction is scorecards for countries and, potentially, for US states. The idea is to help advocates and policymakers see where things stand now, how one jurisdiction compares with another, and where progress is being made. Ideally, people on the ground in those countries could also contribute, making the information more collaborative and useful for strategy.
Lia: So Blossom is becoming more dynamic, more local, and better able to answer the questions that matter in a particular geography.
Floris: Yes, but also comparative. Someone working in the Netherlands should be able to see what is happening in Belgium or elsewhere and learn from that. The field is collaborative by nature, and I want the platform to reflect that rather than reinforce silos.
How Facilitation Shapes the Platform
Lia: I want to shift slightly because you are also a psychedelic facilitator. How does that shape what you build? And from that lens, what are you most excited about and most concerned about as psychedelics move forward?
Floris: It gives me a view of what is actually happening on the ground. In the Netherlands, what I do is better described as psychedelic coaching or therapy in a broad sense, rather than treatment for a formal mental health indication. My wife and I work mainly with people who already have some resources and want support to do better, rather than people with severe, treatment-resistant conditions who need a much broader healthcare infrastructure around them.
That distinction matters. One of the challenges right now, including in places like Oregon, is that people may come in with very complex needs that are not well served by a single psychedelic session. Psychedelics can be extremely helpful, but they need to be embedded within a broader system of care.
At the same time, facilitation keeps the work human. I spend most of my day looking at a screen, so it matters to also witness how transformative these experiences can be over a period of weeks, especially when there is strong preparation and integration [support before and after a psychedelic session]. That gives me perspective on both the human and the systemic sides of this field.
Lia: And just to clarify for a US audience, when we say underground in the United States, that often means illegal or unregulated. In the Netherlands, your work is legal.
Floris: Yes, that distinction is important. There are legal state-level frameworks in the US as well, but the Dutch context is different. There is still a lot to learn from how implementation is happening here, and also from countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland. The frameworks vary, but there are useful overlaps.
Blossom and Delphi
Lia: There is clearly a lot of overlap between the problems you are solving with Blossom and the work we do at Delphi. How do you see the two complementing each other?
Floris: I would describe Delphi’s work as helping integrate psychedelic therapy into mainstream healthcare systems. Blossom can provide the evidence base that helps hospitals, policymakers, and other stakeholders make decisions using current and detailed information. Delphi often works deeply on specific client questions or implementation problems. Blossom can supply the structured foundation underneath that work.
The Insight Sessions are a good example. We have explored ibogaine with Dr. Leith States, insurance with Britt Rollins, and federal policy with Melissa Lavasani. Those are deep dives. My hope is that Blossom provides the underlying information layer that strengthens those conversations.
Lia: That scientific foundation is critical. If psychedelic care is going to be legitimized within healthcare systems, it has to be rooted in data and science. Blossom strengthens the field by making that foundation visible and usable.
What Comes Next for Blossom
Lia: You have just completed a major overhaul, but where do you see Blossom heading over the next year? What should this audience watch for?
Floris: I have many ideas, but I would especially like feedback from this audience because people here are engaged and knowledgeable. One priority is results pages that make it easier to compare outcomes across trials. For example, I want users to be able to quickly see depression scale scores [standardized measures of depressive symptoms, e.g. MADRS] across different studies and generate graphs that update as new papers are added.
Another priority is building more in-depth tools for different stakeholder groups. That includes policy tools, such as country scorecards, but always grounded in the detailed evidence already on the platform.
Audience Q&A: AI, Evidence, and Access
Lia: Let’s open it up to audience questions. The first is from Adriana Kurtzer: Will Blossom track AI companies working in the mental health space, not just psychedelics?
Floris: That could be interesting, especially as part of a broader picture of who is implementing innovation in mental health. The first step for me is deepening the stakeholder map within psychedelics. At Delphi, we built an ecosystem map with many stakeholder types, and just expanding that properly is a significant lift. AI-related companies may well fit into that later, especially where they intersect with psychedelic mental health work.
Lia: That leads to a related question. Many people assume AI will solve everything. Why is Blossom still necessary, rather than just running a query through AI?
Floris: That’s a very good question. AI may eventually become capable of building something like a Blossom page on demand for a specific query, but I do not think we are there yet. Blossom still depends on human judgment, curation, and meaning-making. I decide what belongs in the database rather than just dumping in 50,000 papers. I still manually tag studies and review summaries. I do use AI to help with coding, short summaries, and section summaries, but there is still human creation and human checking behind the platform.
Lia: That distinction is important. AI often treats everything as equivalent, whereas Blossom is designed through curation and interpretation.
Another audience question asks: What is still missing for psychedelics to break through into healthcare systems? There may be more studies on psilocybin than there were on some selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) [a common class of antidepressants] when those drugs were approved, so what is still missing?
Floris: A lot is still missing. It is not just about the number of studies. It is about what kind of evidence exists and how far it has progressed. For psilocybin, there are two Phase III studies from Compass that form part of its evidence package. Those results are clinically significant, but perhaps less dramatic than some people expected. Beyond that, there are some Phase II studies, but the overall evidence base is still much smaller than people sometimes assume.
In Europe, the bar can be even higher. In Germany, for example, developers often need head-to-head studies comparing psilocybin with escitalopram [a commonly prescribed antidepressant]. That kind of evidence is still limited. On health economics [analysis of costs, outcomes, and value in healthcare], we also have only preliminary data rather than a complete picture. So yes, the field has had promising breakthroughs, but from a regulatory and reimbursement perspective, there is still a great deal of work to do.
Audience Q&A: Scorecards, Clinics, and Career Paths
Lia: Eric Bailley asks whether the scorecard approach could be applied to specific US states and tracked by Blossom.
Floris: Yes, definitely. In the US, it could apply at the state level by tracking what bills have been introduced, how they move through the legislative system, and what access is already available. I have also discussed the possibility of scorecards for legislators themselves, based on their voting records and actions. There is a lot of room to develop this further.
Lia: Anil Pollis asks how Blossom can specifically help ketamine clinics that are preparing for possible approval of other psychedelics.
Floris: Blossom can help clinics understand both the science and the practical differences between compounds. A ketamine clinic might want to explore how other psychedelics differ in administration, support needs, and treatment protocols. That includes very practical questions, such as whether a dosing day lasts four, six, eight, or longer hours.
It can also help clinics avoid unrealistic timelines. In 2019 and 2020, many people were saying these treatments would be approved the next year or the year after. That optimism was understandable, but it underestimated the realities of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process and Phase III development. Blossom can help clinics prepare thoughtfully, based on what is actually advancing, rather than what people hope is around the corner.
Over time, I also want the stakeholder side of Blossom to show which organizations represent ketamine clinics, psychedelic practitioners, and training providers, so clinics can plug into those networks as well.
Lia: Carla Honan asks a broader question: What does someone need in order to work with psychedelics, or more broadly, in the field of psychedelics? And how would they get started?
Floris: It depends heavily on where someone is based and what is legally possible there. In Colorado, for example, the pathway is different from the Netherlands. In some places, you need a mental health background plus state-approved training. In the Netherlands, the formal requirements are much looser, but I would still strongly recommend education and personal experience before facilitating.
A large part of the field right now is also in clinical trials. That means some people may enter through universities, contract research organizations (CROs) [companies that run research operations for sponsors], or developer-sponsored training programs from groups such as MAPS, Compass, and others. Blossom already has a directory of psychedelic courses, from short introductory offerings to multi-year therapy trainings.
Lia: I would add that people should start by clarifying their goal. Do you want to work in the field broadly, or do you want to provide psychedelic care? Those are related but different paths. From there, get appropriate training, attend events and conferences, contribute where you can, and build relationships.
This remains a largely pre-revenue field. Many people have worked in it for years for low or no pay. Volunteering, contributing, and becoming part of the community are still some of the most realistic ways in. There are more jobs than there used to be, but there are not yet many open positions.
Audience Q&A: Screening and Closing Reflections
Lia: The last question we have time for is a big one: Is there a unified patient screening [assessment process used to evaluate suitability and safety] that could be co-created as a standard of care for preparation and safety?
Floris: There are already different screening tools in circulation for different patient groups and different psychedelics, and that work is continuing. I think more can be done here, but I do not expect one unified tool to cover every context. What is appropriate in Colorado or the Netherlands is different from what is appropriate in a tightly controlled research trial. And even across clinical populations, such as anorexia versus obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the treatment protocols and therapeutic foundations can differ significantly.
Lia: I agree. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Brian Richards, who has developed a strong assessment tool through the Homecoming platform. It looks across a range of patient contexts and profiles.
Lia: Floris, I want to acknowledge the tremendous work you have done with Blossom. It is a real gift to the field. I hope people will share it widely and use it, and that the platform continues to evolve with input from stakeholders across the ecosystem. It is such a pleasure to know you, to work alongside you, and to highlight your work here today. And thank you to our audience for the thoughtful questions.
Floris: Thank you so much, Lia, and thank you to everyone for being here. We’d love to see you again in just over a month. Our next Insight Session will be on May 6, the first Wednesday of next month.
