Tyler Skluzacek, a college student and son of a soldier suffering from PTSD, developed a new app that will defuse night terrors before they happen.

That app is called myBivy, which a reference to bivouac, or the military term for a safe area to sleep.

The 21-year-old was inspired to create the app by his father, Iraq war veteran and former convoy commander Sgt. First Class Patrick Skluzacek, who suffers from PTSD.

“Your dad just disappearing for a year and coming back a little bit different…I have a real personal connection to the PTSD problem,” Skluzacek said.

When a veteran downloads myBivy on their watch or phone and then falls asleep with the device nearby, the app tracks their sleeping patterns and movements. After a few nights, the app will have enough data to be able to predict when a soldier is entering a nightmare. The app then uses sound vibrations “to disrupt that or take them out of the deep sleep but keep them asleep.”

“It needs to learn how to stop a sleep terror without ever waking up a soldier,” Skluzacek said.

Skluzacek and his team called The Cure coded the app at a competition called HackDC. The Cure took home the $1,500 first prize after coding for thirty hours straight, and Skluzacek’s team is currently working to perfect the program before making it available in popular app stores.