Why Broken Analog Infrastructure Blocks Behavioral Health Innovation
A practitioner perspective by Dr. Ashish Mandavia, Co-Founder and CEO, Sohar Health.
The argument
Digital mental health tools sit atop fax-based, fragmented workflows because behavioral health was excluded from HITECH EHR incentives. Real innovation requires EHR adoption grants, reformed privacy rules, shared capacity platforms, and unified eligibility verification.
Why we picked it
The HTC editorial desk curates practitioner perspectives that pass a simple test: would a health system executive, product leader, or investor act differently after reading it? This piece by Dr. Ashish Mandavia earns its place - it comes from the operating trenches of mental health tech, not the conference stage, and it takes a position specific enough to disagree with.
The bigger picture
The data-infrastructure backdrop makes this conversation timely: TEFCA crossed one billion exchanged health records this summer, up from 10 million in under a year (our coverage), while KLAS reports EHR purchasing fell 40% as capital shifts from record systems to the AI and analytics layered on top of them. Interoperability is no longer the constraint - deciding what to do with flowing data is.
Read it alongside our own reporting in Mental Health Tech, where the data behind this debate is covered daily on the HTC Wire.