- Researchers at the University of East Anglia create an app with AI that helps people quit smoking
- This learns the habits of the user and identifies the situations that trigger the urge to smoke
- The idea is to send messages to help the person at the most opportune moment
At a time when artificial intelligence is in the headlines daily, thanks in particular to ChatGPT, researchers from the University of East Anglia publish their research on an artificial intelligence which, via a smartphone application, can help people to quit smoking. Fighting this addiction is not a simple thing and according to the researchers, one of the factors which makes quitting smoking difficult is the fact that the urge to smoke is triggered by the time spent in places where the person used to smoke.
It is therefore on this problem that the researchers have focused. And to provide a solution, they have created an application called Quit Sense which uses an AI to learn the places or times when the user used to smoke. And when the user of the application is faced with these triggers, the app sends a message helping him to manage his urge to smoke.
“We know that quit attempts often fail because cravings are triggered by spending time in places where people used to smoke. This can be at the pub or at work, for example. Other than the use of medication, there is no way to provide support to help smokers manage these types of situations and cravings when they occur”explains Professor Felix Naughton, who led the research.
These were funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), a UK government fund to support health research. Of course, AI is not 100% efficient. However, according to an experiment carried out by the researchers, these personalized support messages would be more effective than simply sending a document.
Messages at the right time
To test the effectiveness of Quit Sense, the researchers recruited 209 smokers on social networks. These received links to their “treatments” by text message. All participants received online help from the NHS (UK’s National Health Service) to quit smoking. But half of the participants also received a link to download the app. A follow-up was carried out after six months and those who indicated that they had quit smoking were asked to send in a saliva sample.
© University of East Anglia
“We found that when smokers were offered the Quit Sense app, three-quarters installed it and those who started a quit attempt with the app used it for about a month on average”says Professor Naughton. “We also found that four times as many people who were offered the app quit six months later compared to those who only received online NHS support.”
The app would therefore be more efficient than the standard support document. But the researchers admit, however, that these results have limitations. Besides the fact that the sample is quite small, only less than half, people indicating that they have quit smoking have sent in the requested saliva sample. Further research is therefore needed to estimate the true effectiveness of the app.
In any case, this research shows that technology can have a role to play in the fight against smoking.
