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Smartwatch technology helps people quit smoking, new study finds

Press release issued: 2 January 2025

Whether people decide to make New Year resolutions or not, they might want to lead a healthier lifestyle in 2025. According to a new University of Bristol-led study smartwatches could help people give up smoking. The researchers tested a smartwatch fitted with a custom app which used the smartwatch's in-built motion sensors to detect typical smoking movements. The results, published in JMIR Formative Research, showed the technology has the potential to help over two thirds of trial participants quit the habit.

Smoking is the primary cause of preventable illness and premature death, harming nearly every organ of the body and reducing both quality of life and life expectancy. However, quitting is notoriously difficult, and many people try all sorts of ways to stop smoking, with limited success. 

In this new feasibility study, researchers developed software that uses smartwatch motion sensors to identify the typical hand movements of cigarette smoking to help detect a smoking lapse. If the app detects the person is smoking, the smartwatch delivers a relapse prevention message, just at the moment it is needed, to help with their quit attempt.

Researchers tested the intervention on 18 people, interested in quitting smoking, who wore a normal Android smartwatch loaded with the custom app for a period of two weeks.

Participants reported that the smartwatch intervention increased their awareness of smoking, which helped with some of the more automatic aspects of smoking behaviour and made them think about what they were doing, motivating them to quit.

Researchers found that a smoking relapse prevention intervention and the use of a smartwatch as a platform to host a just-in-time behaviour change intervention are both feasible and acceptable to the majority of participants (12 out of 18, 66 per cent) as a relapse prevention intervention.

Read the full University of Bristol news item

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