Quitting smoking isn't child's play. Or is it?

You can play music on the iPhone with the Leaf Trombone app. Researchers believe they can come up with a similar app for smokers to help them quit smoking. Credit: Peter DaSilva/Los Angeles Times .

In a few years if you see a person nervously blowing on his cellphone for five minutes, do not call the cops. He might not be a crazy person who forgot to take his meds; he might just be a smoker trying to quit smoking.

Columbia University's Teachers College announced today that it received a  $150,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, through the foundation's Health Games Research national program to develop a smart phone app that emulates the physiological responses smokers get from smoking.

The first apps are likely to be for Apple Inc.'s iPhone or iPod Touch. The user would control the game by blowing into the device's microphone in response to different color and sound stimuli coming from the handset. Researchers hope that it will be able to elicit the same brain patterns, heart rate levels and relaxation responses that smokers get from smoking. The game, Lit: A Game Intervention for Nicotine Smokers, is expected to be released in about two years.

Breath therapy has been used to help smokers quit smoking for a while, but it's hoped that the game will  disseminate this technique to the masses. "You don't have to learn anything; the game will cause you to breathe the right way," said Charles Kinzer, professor of education in the Communication, Computing and Technology Program and the Game Research Lab at Teachers College.

Technology is being used in another way to help smokers quit smoking. Researchers at the GRAP Occupational Psychology Clinic and the University of Quebec in Gatineau recently found that smokers who crushed virtual cigarettes experienced a significant reduction in nicotine addiction.

Tobacco use is still the leading cause of death in the United States, according to a statement from Kinzer and the Lit project team. It added that 70% of adult smokers say they want to quit, and more than 40% try to quit each year.

Kinzer said, "If we can capitalize on the motivational aspect of games and the availability of mobile devices, there is tremendous potential to positively affect heath and wellness for smokers who want to quit, and this would have implications for healthcare costs as well."

--Melissa Rohlin

Comments

[MishoS]

This isn't even a comment on the content on the article but on how it's written.

LA Times should be ashamed to write something so insensitive to people with mental health problems:

"He might not be a crazy person who forgot to take his meds"

[David Koontz]

Interesting article. Very amazing that our phones are now becoming so much more than a communication device.

Pogue has his top iPhone medical apps:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/medical-apps-for-the-iphone/

Your article notes that development will take about 2 years. This is just crazy talk. Someone is using the wrong method to develop the app if 2 years is acceptable. Now that the idea is on the net you are likely to see someone write a similar app in about 2 months, it's likely already in 'alpha' right now.

May I suggest that the research people publish the desired apps features and allow the open market to develop the applications. There are 100,000 apps in App Store, that means there are lots of iPhone developers. Just issue the challenge by publishing the "specs" and the apps will appear. It might not be the perfect app - but software has this amazing ability to adapt to change over time to become through trial and error the application that we need (not the application we thought we wanted but really don't need).

Two years is too long! There's an app for that - it is called Agile software development. Designed to deliver software that meets the customer's needs quickly, efficiently and with the right features.

David Koontz

[ladyraj]

Breath Therapy and "virtual" cigarettes? You're kidding right? If I see people blowing their cell phones...I'll distance myself certainly, my mental health screams the necessity.

[Kool USA]

This is really interesting. I had been smoking for almost 16 years untill summer of 2008 when I finally gave up smoking -- I simply tossed the pack in a trash can -- In my opinion, what takes to really quit smoking is the ability to say "NO" and then just follow through and not to give-in into the temtation. If I can do it, any one can do it. Anything other than one's self-determination is a money making tactic.
All the best,
Kool USA

[jad]

Oh for God's sake. I smoked non-stop for twenty years; I've been without a cigarette for 20 more. If you want to quit smoking, you stop. It's the easiest thing in the world. If you don't, then you dramatize your presumably heroic struggle with all these absurd games and devices and medical trickery.

[Bill Kirk]

One day I awoke and started coughing something aweful, and weezing like an old steam engine. Driving to work I tossed he cigarets out of the car window and never smoked again.
I will say that this attitude, stopping cold turkey, took quite a bit of will power, but it happened. Any person that wants to "REALLY" quit - can. If I can quit, so can you.
Any half hearted attempt will not work.
Bill Kirk

[George]

AWESOME!!

[Enzo]

Cold turkey. The only way. Period.