March 30, 2023 – Could wearable technology be the longer term of smoking cessation?
Cigarette smoking causes approx. 1 in 5 deaths within the United States, in line with the CDC, making it the leading preventable explanation for death. If the outcomes of Northwestern University's research hold true, a necklace could help avoid wasting of those lives.
Scientists have developed a tool that you just wear around your neck to enable you quit smoking. It is known as “SmokeMon” (appears like Pokémon) and monitors your smoking behavior. Using a heat sensor housed in a special pendant, it detects the warmth signals from burning cigarettes.
The necklace can detect when a cigarette is lit, when the person takes a drag, how much time passes between drags, and the way often and for a way long they inhale. Using a kind of artificial intelligence referred to as deep learning, this information will help predict whether an individual will relapse and when to intervene, similar to with a text or video message on the smartphone suggesting mindfulness techniques. The device can be placed in a research paper In Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.
It's the most recent in a growing variety of wearable devices designed to assist people quit smoking. Some wrist-worn devices use motion sensors to detect if you smoke (or are about to). Others have chest straps to detect the inhalation pattern of smoking. Still others use cameras embedded in glasses to capture images of smoking.
“People are definitely becoming more accustomed to using wearable devices to measure the effects on their health,” says Santosh Kumar, PhD, a professor of computer science on the University of Memphis who was not involved within the study. A tool like this necklace may very well be particularly useful in smoking cessation research, Kumar says.
Previous wearables have drawbacks that the necklace avoids, say researchers at Northwestern University. Motion sensors may not have the opportunity to differentiate between smoking and eating or touching the mouth. Chest straps might be annoying and cameras raise privacy concerns.
But after all the technology only works if people actually wear it.
For the necklace, the Northwestern team had volunteers test a prototype. The first was a small blue pendant made by a 3D printer.
“I saw that people cared about what the sensor housing looked like, so I came up with the idea of designing and printing different housings individually,” says the lead study creator Nabil Alshurafa, PhDAssociate Professor of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University and Director of the HABitsLab.
Alshurafa realized that folks can be more more likely to wear a necklace that matched their style. Since then, the team has been 3D printing custom designs for cases and even letting users usher in their favorite pendants as models.
Alshurafa's team desires to test the effectiveness of the necklace in practice. To do that, they're collaborating with hospitals and community centers that provide smoking cessation programs. They have already conducted focus group tests with a few of these programs and asked 18 tobacco treatment specialists for feedback on the device.
The price of such a necklace stays to be seen, but Alshurafa expects the price to be comparable to that of a smartwatch.