Want to quit smoking? Smokebeat app tracks how much time and money you’ve wasted on cigarettes

The demon that is cigarette addiction is no laughing matter, claiming the lives of five million people yearly. Seven trillion cigarettes are smoked every year by what the World Health Organization estimates to be over a billion people. Its shame that something so deadly, so chemically formulated to cause dependency is legal. This is where the Smokebeat steps in, a data analytics platform designed to quantify your habit.

Smokebeat’s algorithm identifies the “hand-to-mouth” gesture of smoking, distinguishing between eating, drinking, shaving, and any similar gestures with “100 percent accuracy,” claims Somatix CEO Eran Ofir, CEO of the Tel Aviv-based Somatix , the company that created the app.

Smokebeat provides an unprecedented glimpse into the frequency of smoking, the time between the last cigarette, what social settings trigger the habit, as well the cumulative daily/weekly/monthly history of smoking. It’s like a fitness app, but meant to support those actively trying to quit.

The idea is that Smokebeat encourages users to quit smoking by offering cognitive, emotional, and financial incentives. Users pair Smokebeat with wearables such as the fitbit/jawbone and receive alerts on their smartphones giving them all the insight necessary to be better informed of the impact smoking has on their lives. The app also tracks the number of cigarettes smoked and the true cost of smoking.

“Doctors are given a remote monitoring tool and a dashboard where they can see the adherence and success of users in smoking cessation. We don’t determine the [smoking cessation] process, it is up to the doctor, but we are able to calculate its efficacy,” Eran says.

Those in denial can technically remove the wearable running the app, but then what’s the point of having even installed it in the first place? Somatix understands that users may occasionally forget their device, and to that extend, it can identify when the device was left idle, is switched off, or worn by another person. “But we’re trying to help people, not spy on them,” Ofir says, “there are many, many people who are truly trying to stop smoking because they understand how dangerous it is for their health.”

But will it catch on? Somatix certainly thinks so, citing the recent trend of quantifying everything as the primary driver, especially when the data generated is accompanied by the financial incentives awarded by health insurances for healthy results. The app is still under development, but users may register for a pilot “beta” program on the Somatix website.

Source: Techinasia