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A systematic review of smartphone applications for smoking cessation

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Translational Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the USA. However, limited data exists regarding smoking cessation mobile app quality and intervention effectiveness. Innovative and scalable interventions are needed to further alleviate the public health implications of tobacco addiction. The proliferation of the smartphone and the advent of mobile phone health interventions have made treatment more accessible than ever. The purpose of this review was to examine the relation between published scientific literature and available commercial smartphone health apps for smoking cessation to identify the percentage of scientifically supported apps that were commercially available to consumers and to determine how many of the top commercially available apps for smoking cessation were supported by the published scientific literature. Adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, apps were reviewed in four phases: (1) identified apps from the scientific literature, (2) searched app stores for apps identified in the literature, (3) identified top apps available in leading app stores, and (4) determined which top apps available in stores had scientific support. Seven articles identified six apps with some level of scientific support, three (50%) were available in at least one app store. Conversely, among the top 50 apps suggested by each of the leading app stores, only two (4%) had any scientific support. While half of the scientifically vetted apps remain available to consumers, they are difficult to find among the many apps that are identified through app store searches.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA, 01655, USA

    Brianna L. Haskins MS, Donna Lesperance MA, MPH & Patric Gibbons MS4

  2. Departments of Emergency Medicine, Psychiatry, and Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA, 01655, USA

    Edwin D. Boudreaux PhD

Authors
  1. Brianna L. Haskins MS
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  2. Donna Lesperance MA, MPH
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  3. Patric Gibbons MS4
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  4. Edwin D. Boudreaux PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brianna L. Haskins MS.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Research involving human participants and/or animals

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

For this type of study formal consent is not required.

Previous reporting of data

The findings reported have not been previously reported or published and the manuscript is not being simultaneously submitted elsewhere.

IRB approval

This paper is a review of published data and is exempt from IRB review.

Primary data access

The authors have full control of all primary data and that they agree to allow the journal to review the data if requested.

Funding

This study was funded through internal department funds.

Additional information

Implications

Researchers: This paper will help guide future research efforts in the development and evaluation of mobile health applications for tobacco cessation by drawing attention to the scarcity of scientifically vetted mobile health apps, the difficulty in finding those which are supported by scientific evidence, and the need for a more efficient method for evaluating such technology-based health interventions.

Practitioners: This paper will help guide practitioners toward evidence-based mobile health applications when recommending mHealth and eHealth tools for their patients.

Policymakers: This paper will inform policymakers about the scarcity of proven scientifically supported mobile health applications for smoking cessation and inform decisions regarding the evaluation and regulation of such applications.

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Haskins, B.L., Lesperance, D., Gibbons, P. et al. A systematic review of smartphone applications for smoking cessation. Behav. Med. Pract. Policy Res. 7, 292–299 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-017-0492-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-017-0492-2

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