Image via Releaf.

When you’ve got a headache you might take Tylenol or Advil, but these drugs aren’t interchangeable. They work differently and have distinct side effects.

In the same way, strains of cannabis affect medical patients in various ways, depending on both the weed and the person using it. A sleepy strain might serve an insomniac better than a more energy-boosting one, for instance. But there hasn’t been the same rigorous testing, so patients are often imbibing without knowing exactly what will happen.

Enter Releaf, a D.C.-based app currently in beta testing.

“We want to help medical cannabis users figure out what’s best for them, in a friendly manner and bring a little bit of science to it,” says Branden Hall, CTO of D.C.-based MoreBetter, the company behind the new app Releaf. “We don’t know enough about [cannabis] as we should. There’s a culture around it that is not necessarily conducive to the best way of taking it for medical use—you have the ‘420 bro dabs’ side of things and that’s not the approach you should be taking from a medical standpoint.”

Hall and Keenan Keeling, best friends since they were 11 years old, founded another software consulting company Automata a decade ago. They worked with companies like IBM and Victoria’s Secret. Franco Brockelman joined Automata four years ago, after meeting Hall at a local event.

It was Brockelman’s experience that led to the seed for Releaf. His mother, who lived in Massachusetts, was suffering from psoriatic arthritis.

Franco Brockelman and his mother, Nancy. (Photo courtesy of Franco Brockelman)

“It was making it hard for her to move, and she would get frustrated at just being unable to find the right medicine and the plan to deal with the pain and immobility,” Brockelman says. “At a certain point I said, ‘If all of these pain medications aren’t working you should think about trying cannabis,’ but she was really steadfast in staying away from alcohol and drugs when she was younger, and she was reluctant to ruin that record.”

Months later, she called him to say she was ready to give cannabis a try. But “there was such a lack of information or a starting point,” says Brockelman. “The unapproachability and the lack of data … it just seemed like there could be a much better way.”

Hall agrees. “We saw that there’s a real need. The best software is made by scratching a very personal itch.”

So the team behind Releaf began working on a prototype for the app, bringing new versions to Brockelman’s mom. “We called them ‘mom tests’ and eventually it started clicking,” Brockelman says. “We just kept going and giving her new builds. She would say what was confusing and what wasn’t.”

In May, Releaf launched its beta version to broaden out its user base beyond mom.

Hall describes the app as “applying basic scientific thinking—write it down, record how you’re feeling, and we can use the intel of people’s smartphones to aggregate that data and send it back to you.”

After patients try a cannabis strain, they enter into Releaf how it makes them feel and if it has any side effects. It tracks the different cannabanoids and terpenes that differentiate the strains to provide an overall rating for the cannabis, and for the particular symptoms that patients are trying to treat. Hall calls it a “tight feedback loop.”

They’ve been working with folks at the Takoma Wellness Center to tweak the app. “We’ve always recommended that our patients journal their experiences with different strains, but we’ve found that using a structured format helps them journal more effectively, and then use the information to make more informed choices regarding their medicine,” says Stephanie Kahn, the president of the medical marijuana dispensary. She adds that Takoma Wellness Center already distributes session worksheets, which are hard copies of Releaf’s model, to patients.

Hall says that the team is trying to gamify the process of science recording. “We’re honing the user interface to make it joyful, fun, humanistic. For most people, science isn’t fun and recording isn’t a joyful thing,” Hall says. “Just as much as we’re about cannabis, we’re about simple awareness of how you feel. This isn’t ‘take two and call me in the morning.'”

So far, Hall and Brockelman are happy with the beta testing. There haven’t been any crashes, and they’ve largely been busying themselves with adding new features.

“We’re making sure everything is as beautiful as it possibly can be,” says Hall. “We want to be the adults in the room. We don’t have a pot leaf in our logo. We don’t have a pot leaf anywhere in the app.”

And on Saturday, Releaf is hosting a focus group to see in-person how patients use the app. People who have medical symptoms that they would like to treat with cannabis will get a chance to smoke and record their experiences in Releaf on the spot. “We’ll essentially be able to look over people’s shoulders as they use the app,” says Hall.

Because they’ll be giving away the weed for free (patients can either use a vaporizer, papers, or pipes) and conducting it at a private residence, the focus group is within the letter of the law.

“Right now people are signing up and it’s pretty incredible to see—all have different ailments they’re looking to treat,” says Brockelman.

If everything goes according to plan, Releaf will be released to Apple’s App Store in June, followed shortly thereafter on Android devices. MoreBetter spun off from Automata in case Releaf needed flexibility when it comes to investment, though Hall says the effort thus far has been entirely self-funded.

Hall can’t wait for the official launch. “I’ve been making software that sells stuff and now I’m making something that will hopefully make people feel better,” he says.