Proudly Canadian · Working internationally

For researchers

A study-ready app, without the engineering grant

I am a researcher in psychology, specialized in digital mental health. I offer my services to research teams: advisory work, and building mobile and web apps in co-design with end users, at a price a lab budget can reach.

Ph.D. psychology · Postdoc in digital mental health, University of Montreal

Book a free 30-minute call See the three offers

What I offer

Three ways to work together

Advisory services

One hour at a time, on the questions that surface when a study involves a digital technology: where to start, what AI can realistically do, what it will cost, and who owns the intellectual property.

$85 per hour, plus taxes (CAD)

About advisory →

App development in co-design

A mobile or web app your participants can use and your ethics committee can examine, built with your team and yours to keep. You decide how far the work goes, and the price follows.

$14,000 to $32,000 plus taxes (CAD)

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A website for your lab or clinic

A professional website on your own domain and hosting, like this one.

$2,500 plus taxes (CAD)

About websites →

Who you would work with

A researcher on your side of the table

I have run the whole lifecycle of a digital mental health app in the academic sector: from idea to prototype, through co-design, to pilot testing of feasibility and efficacy. I am now repeating the cycle on a larger scale in the private sector, through my startup.

I know the hard questions that come with this work:

Data privacy and security
Clinical validity
Intellectual property
User engagement
Technology longevity

Alexandre Lemyre, Ph.D.

Author of 22 peer-reviewed articles, cited more than 450 times.

View my profile on ResearchGate →

What I am not

I am not a licensed psychologist nor a software engineer.

Postdoctoral fellowship focused on digital mental health
University of Montreal, Canada, 2021 to 2024
Ph.D., master's and bachelor's degrees in psychology
Laval University, Canada, 2011 to 2021

Teaching: digital mental health: I co-developed a 45-hour master's-level online course on digital mental health, and an accredited 7-hour continuing education course for licensed professionals.
App development: During my postdoctoral fellowship, I developed and clinically tested a mobile app for post-traumatic nightmares. I built it with a low-code platform, without AI tools, implementing every screen, every functionality, and every part of the backend by hand. It was a long learning curve that taught me how each piece of an app actually works. I also led its co-design with 14 end users and 3 professional designers.
Current paid work: I am developing a mobile app for post-traumatic stress at the University of Montreal, in collaboration with mental health professionals.
Entrepreneurship: I founded THEOR-E, where I built the first version of a mental health platform with an advanced conversational agent.

Offer · Advisory

Advisory services

$85 per hour, plus taxes (CAD). No minimum.

My role is to help you see clearly through the decisions that shape your study, and the future real-world impact of the technology.

What I can help with

Your protocol and your methods

Protocol development, the choice of measures and comparison conditions, and the methodological decisions that determine what your data will let you claim.

From idea, through the study, to real-world use

What each stage entails, the risks along the way, and what becomes of the technology once it is validated.

What AI can realistically do in your app

What large language models make possible at low cost, and what genuinely requires a computer science team, a large budget, and time.

Reviews, supervision, and grant sections

Reviewing texts, supervising graduate students, or writing the sections of a grant application that address digital technology.

The first meeting is free

If your protocol, your methods, or the life of the app after the study need sorting out, book a time and we will talk.

Book your free call

Offer · App development

App development in co-design

$14,000 to $32,000 plus taxes (CAD)

Study-ready means an app your ethics committee can examine, your participants can use, and your study can rely on. The offer starts with its base: I build the app with your team. Everything else is an optional addition to that base, and you decide how far to go.

The app you have in mind

A mental health app
An app that delivers training to professionals or students
A custom app for your laboratory's needs
An existing app rebuilt with better design and new functionalities

The base

I build the app with your team

$14,000 CAD

Up to ten meetings of 60 to 90 minutes with members of your research team, one every week or two. You bring your vision, the literature, and the functionalities you want, and I produce subsequent versions of the app until the product is right. The app you receive is fully functional and carefully designed, in French, English, or both. Mobile apps are deployed privately on the App Store and the Play Store.

Includes roughly $1,500 for the frontier AI models all professional app developers use in 2026.

On request, I can show you an app currently under development, so you have a concrete reference for the work.

Optional additions to the base

Co-design with end users

Add $6,000 CAD

Co-design, also called participatory design, means the people who will use the app help shape it. In psychology and related fields, this has become the standard. The goal is to create an app your end users will actually enjoy, engage with, and want to use day to day.

Who takes part

The following is my preferred co-design approach, but we can adjust it as needed. First, we form three groups of 3 to 6 end users, drawn from the population your app targets. We need to determine how they are recruited.

Your team recruits

Included

You prepare the ethics application, lead recruitment, and collect any health information your protocol needs, such as questionnaires or diagnostic interviews. You are responsible for that data, and I never have access to it.

I recruit

Add $2,000 CAD

I lead recruitment without an ethics committee approval, which is not mandatory in this context. I prepare a consent form that you can review. I collect only basic sociodemographic variables and, if needed, self-reported diagnosis.

Either way

Participant compensation for their time in the co-design meetings is an additional cost you cover.

If Facebook campaigns are part of the recruitment strategy, I prepare the promotional material and run the campaigns. You are responsible for paying Meta for the ads.

How the nine meetings run

I lead nine meetings over about three months. Each group takes part in three meetings of 2 to 3 hours, in rotation (see the table below).

Before each meeting, participants download the latest version of the app. During the meeting they navigate it and suggest improvements. Between meetings, I improve the app to address at least 80% of what they asked for.

You receive a report summarizing every suggestion, what was implemented, and the reasoning behind anything that was not. Some suggestions will need your expert input. You can request further changes or ask to revert changes before the next meeting.

A professional designer

Add $3,000 CAD

A professional designer joins the design process, whether the app is designed with your team alone or co-designed with end users as well. Their role is to improve the user experience, reduce friction, and make the app clear enough that participants use it as intended. Although not mandatory, involving professional designers is considered best practice.

Security review

When health data are collected, data security is a top priority for users, ethics committees, and funders. I offer two ways to meet that expectation.

Either one, or both

Back and forth with your IT department

Add $2,000 CAD

I work directly with your IT department: I answer their questions, walk them through the codebase and the backend, and make the changes they ask for.

A software engineer's review, with report

Add $5,000 CAD

I contract a software engineer in Canada who runs a structured data security review and writes a report describing how the app protects participant data (about one week of full-time work). That document can be handed to your IT department and your ethics committee.

This is not an end-to-end audit, and it does not include penetration testing, which typically costs $10,000 to $40,000 at engineering firms and would, in most cases, be excessive.

Included with every project

After delivery

Support

I answer at no charge ethics-committee and grant-application questions about the app, its development, and how it works.

Artistic direction

Fonts, colours, and layout are centralized: one edit changes them everywhere. A detailed specification sheet sets the artistic direction for any future feature.

Languages

Implemented so that adding any language is straightforward.

If you need new features or a new language after the final delivery, we agree on a custom quote.

Prices and payment

Summary: every part and its price

I build the app with your team: $14,000 CAD
Co-design with end users: Add $6,000 CAD; Co-design with recruitment handled by me · Add $2,000 CAD
A professional designer: Add $3,000 CAD
Back and forth with your IT department: Add $2,000 CAD
A software engineer's review, with report: Add $5,000 CAD

Compensating the co-design participants, and any advertising you choose, are extra and paid by you. Every figure is in Canadian dollars, plus taxes.

How payment works

You can pay in a single payment if your budget has to be spent this term, or in instalments tied to the parts we agreed on. If you pay in instalments, you can end the collaboration and owe nothing for the parts we never start. We set the exact schedule in the contract.

None of this is fixed. If your study needs something different, tell me on the call and we will build the quote around it.

Compared with the usual alternatives

An engineering firm and a design studio

Expect a quote of roughly two to four times $32,000, the upper end of this offer. They build well, but without a research background, they need your direction at every step.

A freelance developer

Unlikely to cost less, and the result is far less predictable. With no familiarity with science-based apps or co-design, quality varies a lot from one developer to the next. As with a firm, they need your direction at every step.

The current offer

An in-depth design process with your team and, optionally, with end users. Science-based content in the hands of a researcher. The practices your field expects, without the need for micro-management.

To keep in mind for later

Before deploying in real-world settings

This section concerns real-world deployment, after you finish one or more studies with the app.

Data security

If you included the software engineer's review in the current offer, it gives reasonable assurance on data security at the time of delivery.

Ongoing oversight

It is good practice to have an engineer oversee privacy and security on a part-time basis. That person usually also acts as the privacy officer Law 25 requires.

Taking security further

A formal technical security review by a specialized firm, or SOC 2 or ISO certification, are expensive and may only be necessary in some deployment scenarios.

Legal compliance

Your ethics approval and consent form cover the study. Once you offer the app outside that study, privacy law takes their place, and you have obligations in two places.

In the app

Express opt-in before personal information is collected
A privacy policy that matches the app, ideally written by lawyers

In the organization

A named privacy officer
An incident register
Destruction or anonymization of data no longer needed

Questions and answers

Intellectual property

You keep 100% of it. The contract transfers all IP on the app to you, and every co-design participant signs an IP transfer agreement. The app's content is original; where third-party material is necessary, it is used only under licenses that allow commercial use.

Where the data live

The backend will be Firebase, a Google service. A backend is a server that the app connects to over the internet, and it is where the data are stored and processed. Firebase lets us choose the country where the data are kept. Google's data processing agreement covers health data for every service used: Firestore, Firebase Storage, Google Cloud, and the Gemini API if you want generative AI features. If your study protocol allows it, the app can also be built fully offline, with no server at all. In an offline app, the data are stored and processed directly on the mobile phone, tablet or computer where the app is installed.

The App Store and Play Store require one. I generate it with professional software built by lawyers. I cover the cost for the first year; from the second year on, it is yours, about $150 CAD per year.

Access to data

When development ends, my access to Firebase is removed. From that point on, I cannot see participant data.

Credit and authorship

I do not request authorship or co-investigator status on grant applications or scientific articles. You will be welcome to use my name, title and credentials in funding applications and acknowledgements if you wish.

Invoicing

By default, I invoice under my company name, THEOR-E Inc. If invoicing under my own name as a freelancer would give your project a strategic advantage, we can discuss that option.

Languages

I can develop the app in French, English, or in both languages. If you need another language, I can implement it, provided you supply a reviewer who speaks that language and can review the app after the new language is in place.

Letter of intention

If you decide to write a grant application including a budget for app development or advisory services, I will be happy to sign a letter of intention for projects planned to begin in the next 12 months.

The first meeting is free

If a study-ready app is what you have in mind, book a time and we will talk through scope, timeline, and fit.

Book your free call

Offer · Websites

A website for your lab or clinic

$2,500 plus taxes (CAD)

A professional website connected to your own domain and hosting provider; I help you choose and set up both. You provide at least a draft of the text. Hosting and the domain are billed to you directly; both are relatively inexpensive. I recommend Hostinger for quality and cost (I receive no commission). I built THEOR-E's website.

Feedback on this offer

Do you need something different?

Tell me what would make this useful to you: what is unclear, what holds you back, or what you need that I am not offering here.

Starting points

Do you need help this page does not offer?
Does the page leave a worry unanswered?
Would a different scope, price, or timeline change your interest?

The first meeting is free

Whether you need advice, an app, or a second opinion on a plan you already have, book a time and we will talk.

Book your free call