The world’s first artificial intelligence-powered quit smoking app has proven to be effective at helping people, a new study has revealed.
Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research and the Medical Research Council, the Quit Sense app uses AI to detect when people enter places where they used to smoke and subsequently provides support to help people manage their triggers.
The University of Cambridge’s Dr Chloë Siegele-Brown helped develop the app. She said: “Quit Sense is an AI smartphone app that learns about the times, locations and triggers of previous smoking events to decide when and what messages to display to the users to help them manage urges to smoke in real time.”
A study led by the University of East Anglia investigated the efficacy of the app via a randomised controlled trial that included 209 participants. All the smokers received links to NHS support whilst half were also sent the Quit Sense app as well.
The University of East Anglia’s Professor Felix Naughton was the lead researcher on the project. He said that his team found that, for the cohort of people who were offered the app in addition to NHS support, three-quarters installed it and the people who attempted to quit smoking used the app for around a month on average.
“We also found that four times more people who were offered the app quit smoking six months later compared to those only offered online NHS support,” Professor Naughton added.
As well as the universities of East Anglia and Cambridge, the study was conducted in conjunction with the Norwich Clinical Trials Unit, the University of Nottingham, King’s College London, University College London and Imperial College London.
More information on the trial is available here.
