In July of 2012, I took a year off from medical school to complete a research project sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. For the first time ever, I spent almost 100% of my time dedicated to a project that I dreamed up. I worked with incredible mentors, heard from amazing speakers, and rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest names in my future field: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Plus, my schedule allowed me to work from 9 to 5, something I had never experienced before given the rigors of working, a neuroscience degree, and the challenging first two years of medical school. This schedule allowed me to spend plenty of time with my wife and newborn daughter.

While my time spent doing research was great, I realized that it would be many years before I would be able to fully devote myself to another project. Two more years of medical school lay ahead, and then it would be another five years before I completed my residency training. After this seven year hiatus, I would finally be in a position where I have control of my time once again. Sure, there will be small opportunities to collaborate and write papers here and there, but most scientific papers have very little impact—especially the ones you can bang out in your spare time. The greatest value of research comes from the constant interactions among a community of devoted investigators, and it is difficult to be an active member of that community without a full-time research career.

I was discouraged. Although I was developing skills that would make me a better clinician and scientist in the future, I wanted to have some form of impact right away. Wasn’t there something I could do to give back to the community as a medical student? The need for evidence-based mental health treatments is immense, and although study after study has shown that the combination of medication and therapy is the most effective treatment for most mental illnesses, many people never receive therapy.

And then inspiration hit me: what if I could write software that delivered evidence-based psychotherapy to people for free? And although that is much too difficult for me to do right now, what if I started by writing a basic smartphone app that at least helps people practice some of these principles?

Of course, this thought came to me during the last month of my research year, the only period where I could have actually dedicated a substantial amount of time to development. Now I was being thrown into the fire of third year rotations; a crazy time where I would rotate through every service in the hospital, pretend to be a doctor, and actually need to know what to do with sick patients. Sure, there would be supervisors to keep patients safe, but they were also the ones that would continuously bombard me with questions to ensure that I was learning everything I needed to know. The mornings started early, and the evenings were devoted to study. And to make matters worse, I didn’t really know how to code.

To be fair, I wasn’t a complete coding virgin. I had taken one college class that taught the basics of Java programming. But that was almost ten years before, and my programming experience since that time had been limited to Excel spreadsheets. My undergraduate degree was in neuroscience, which is great for teaching you how to think like a biological scientist, but terrible for answering any kind of computer question. In short, I had no idea what I was getting into.

Choosing a platform was easy. I didn’t have a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPad, so developing for iOS was at least $1300 too rich for me. I did, however, have my less-than-trusty med school laptop and a Nexus 4. So my out of pocket investment was just $100; $25 for a Google Play Developer Account, and $75 to register an LLC so that—heaven forbid—if someone hurts himself while using my app, I won’t lose everything.

I started to re-learn Java in the best and worst way possible: Codecademy.com. I say best because the user interface is amazing, the lessons are bite-sized, and I personally learn best by doing. I say worst because Codecademy doesn’t actually offer a course on Java, and I was naive enough to think that Javascript and Java have a lot in common. That’s not Codecademy’s fault, but it did shine a light on just how much I didn’t know. Even with this setback, I did learn some useful information about loops, switch statements, and data types, which seems to translate well across platforms. But, before I wrote a line of code for my app, it was time to start my rotations.

My development plan was fairly simple. I had become a big fan of Duolingo, and so I decided to draw inspiration from their process. The gimmick of scoring points, leveling up, and extending my streak was surprisingly satisfying, and I was able to attain a 90 day streak in something I had never been able to stick with before. What if I applied the same process to psychotherapy? I could make basic exercises, create simple goals, and see if racking up a score inspires people to actually use these proven principles. I would make all of the essential features free, and then hope that a few people would be willing to pay a few dollars to support future projects.

So, for the last 9 months, I’ve been plugging away at this app in my increasingly rare spare time. I’ve downloaded sample code, searched all over the internet for answers to ridiculously simple programming questions, and written what I imagine to be some of the messiest code possible. I’ve learned what tasks I can attempt in five minutes of spare time, and which I should save for those precious moments when I have a full hour. I’ve created more bugs than I’ve fixed, but learned more than I’ve forgotten. Most importantly, I’ve created something that gives back and that inspires me to reach further with the next project. Now I’ve got to figure out how to get it to the people who need it.

Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it useful to a few people with depression and anxiety? I sure hope so. Is it the start of something bigger? Absolutely.

I’m always interested in more feedback. Check out CBT Keeper on Google Play or Kindle Fire.