Why I Built Zenara

Zenara exists because the current system is failing the people trying to deliver good mental health care. I know — I'm one of them. A psychiatrist with more than 20 years in practice, including 10 years in the trenches building a better way. This is what I found.

Ravi Hariprasad

Founder & CEO, Zenara Health

Built for clinicians who refuse to settle

My journey from engineer to psychiatrist to system-builder

1

Engineering the hidden layer

I trained as an engineer and operations researcher at Cornell. I've always been drawn to systems—how information flows, where bottlenecks hide, how small changes ripple through complex networks. Early in my career I worked on tracking technology that foreshadowed what became 'Find My' in smartphones: making invisible signals visible so people could find what mattered.
2

Learning medicine's language

I went to medical school at Penn and later completed psychiatry training and an MPH at Harvard. Psychiatry drew me because it lives at the intersection of mind, body, context, and story. But even early on, I could see the mismatch: the medicine we wanted to practice vs. the systems we were practicing inside.
3

Care models at scale

At Kaiser Permanente's Oakland flagship, I helped build one of its largest behavioral health integration programs, serving a 500,000-patient catchment. Later, as the first clinical leader at Ginger (now part of Headspace Health), I helped architect clinical models that scaled nationally through digital platforms.

Those roles taught me what large systems can do—and also how often technology is bolted on without really serving clinicians or patients.

4

Turning a clinic into a lab

After years at scale, I opened Intuitive Psychiatry in San Francisco as a laboratory for integrative, measurement-based care. For the last decade, I've used PHQ-9 and other instruments on nearly every visit, and built workflows for collaborative, whole-person care.

Roughly 400 patients have gone through this model. We've run structured care-management for complex patients. We've seen what actually helps, what burns clinicians out, and what makes practices sustainable.

5

When the tools finally caught up

When modern large language models emerged, something clicked. The workflows I'd been refining for years could finally be encoded and scaled—not as generic 'AI psychiatry,' but as clinician-defined processes.

Zenara Health was born out of that realization: put the right workflows in place, let clinicians be clinicians, and use AI and automation to handle everything beneath the waterline.

ensō

Why ‘Zenara’ and the open circle

The ensō is an open circle from Zen calligraphy—drawn in a single breath, never perfectly closed. It represents wholeness in motion: the recognition that mastery isn’t a destination, it’s a practice you return to.

The line crossing our ensō forms the ‘Z.’ It represents flow—information, care, and attention moving through a system without friction.

“To Zenara” is a verb: to make the invisible work of clinical care visible, organized, and sustainable. It’s what happens when technology finally serves the medicine instead of the other way around.

How we think about technology in medicine

Tech in the background, humanity in the foreground

The best tools in medicine disappear. The stethoscope doesn't demand attention—it extends perception. The EKG produces a readable output without requiring interpretation training for every nurse. Zenara works the same way. Documentation, coordination, measurement, billing—these should feel almost invisible. Eyes up, hands free, present. Not typing.

Zenara works the same way. Documentation, coordination, measurement, billing—these should feel almost invisible. Eyes up, hands free, present. Not typing.

Preparation, not replacement

AI shouldn't diagnose patients, make treatment decisions, or replace therapeutic relationships. Those require human judgment, ethics, and presence.
What AI can do is prepare. It can organize a patient's history before you walk in. It can surface patterns you'd catch if you had four hours instead of forty minutes. It can find what screening shortcuts miss.
Zenara's AI does the work beneath the waterline—so clinicians can do the work only they can do.

”The problem in mental healthcare isn't that clinicians lack skill—it's that systems force shortcuts. Give a psychiatrist comprehensive information and protected time, and they'll find what's actually driving the suffering. That should be the default, not the exception.

Ravi Hariprasad, MD, MPHZenara Health CEO & Founder

What we’re here to do

Mission

To optimize workflows, illuminate insights, and support care models that let psychiatry and behavioral health practices serve more of their community with sustainable excellence.

Vision

A world where high-quality mental healthcare is available to entire communities because the people delivering it are supported by systems that actually work for them.

Values

  • Clarity – Say the real thing, in plain language.
  • Compassion – Honor the humanity of patients, clinicians, and partners.
  • Trustworthiness – Do the right thing, especially when nobody is looking.
  • Thoughtful Innovation – Experiment, but anchored in evidence and real-world feedback.
  • Love What You Do – This work is too hard to do half-heartedly.

Who we built this for

How this was built

Zenara wasn’t designed in a lab. It was built inside a working psychiatric practice over ten years of measurement-based care—refined through roughly 400 patients, structured care management, and continuous iteration on what actually helps.
We validated our assessment methodology in an integrated primary care partnership, where comprehensive evaluations identified findings that changed treatment trajectories. The clinical foundation is proven. Now we’re scaling it.

Who we’re for

  • Psychiatry practices ready to practice deeply and sustainably
  • Psychotherapy practices that want better evaluations—and in some cases, a path to psychiatric partnership
  • Primary care groups that see behavioral health as part of their scope
  • Health systems ready to run real care models, not just buy tools

If you recognize yourself here, we should talk.

If this story feels like yours, let's talk

Zenara isn't about selling software. It's about helping clinicians build practices and programs that they're proud of—and that can survive. If you're ready to explore what that might look like in your world, I'd be honored to think it through with you.

See how the Zenara Assist suite works