MapMySmoke: Feasibility of a New Quit Cigarette Smoking Mobile Phone Application Using Integrated Geo-positioning Technology, and Motivational Messaging Within Primary Care Setting

Investigators know that place-based cues play an important role in the triggering of smoking events, and even in relapse events. It follows that providing individual smokers with spatially explicit and temporally dynamic intervention messages may support smoking cessation attempts.

The investigators have built a mobile phone application-MayMySmoke-that allows individuals to capture each smoking event at the times and places they occur, and tag the events with qualitative metadata. The app also allows individuals to document and describe craving events. The goal of the app is first to understand an individual's smoking profile, and second to support them with dynamic text messages.

The investigators are deploying the app in a clinical setting-the United Kingdom's National Health Service, within the Fife region of Scotland. Using two feasibility studies of increasing size, the investigators are attempting first to get initial feedback on the app, and then to improve the app and deploy it across a broader community of smokers.

Though the app is targeted to smoking behavior, it is possible to extend it to include other negative health behaviors that may have a spatial component.