Trying to quit smoking? Going cold turkey is diffucult for many. Some don't realize just how much the smoke in a day?
It turns out that taking a drag from a cigarette is a classifiable gestures. Using a Samsung Gear 2 is able to distinguish between eating, drinking and smoking by a characterizable motion and arm rotation. Breathe.io can easily record all instances of a users smoking on a drag-by-drag basis. Coupled with an algorithm that factors in the half life of nicotine in the human body, the app can accurately detect a smokers real time nicotine levels – an invaluable measurement for any user trying to quit.
Breathe.io is the first of its kind. THe first use case of using wearables to elicit change in smoking behaviour. The idea was voted crowd favorite at Hacking Health 2013, the forefront hackathon for healthcare worldwide, designed to improve healthcare by inviting technology creators and healthcare professionals to collaborate on realistic, human-centric problems. Chronic lung disease, one of the most preventable chronic diseases causes $154 billion in healthcare costs each year and where smokers constitute 4 out of 5 cases of lung cancer.
Cigarette addiction is a well known positive reinforcing loop; a user gets nicotine from cigarettes, and in turn the nicotine causes the user to crave more cigarettes. An increase of nicotine in a smoker’s system has an inverse effect on that individuals willpower to say no to cigarettes. A smoker trying to quit should first strive to lower their nicotine levels to manageable amounts and then kick the habit for good. Users of Breathe.io will be able to get quaitifble data to elict a change in hbehavious, much like fitness trackers. While trackers are trying to encourage a positive behavior, Breathe.io is trying to discourage you from performing a negative one. In order to truly understand behavior change.
To help elicit behavior change Breathe.io can learn both the time and the location of a users smoking events and then preemptively alert smokers to be on their guard. They can learn about patterns in their smoking habits: when and where.If the Gear detects smoking activity, Breathe.io can alert a user’s mobile device and can suggest a different activity such as taking a photo or playing a mobile game.
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