Mobile App to Help Teens Quit Nicotine Addiction
Hutch's Reservoir Fund is providing additional support to develop and test the first-ever mobile smartphone application aimed at helping teenagers quit nicotine through randomized controlled trials. The research will be funded over a two-year period by the Northwestern University Health System Institute for Health Research in the United States.
Bricker plans to adapt his digital therapy application Quit2Heal, designed to help adults quit smoking, into an age-appropriate application to assist young people in quitting smoking. He intends to conduct a randomized control trial next year, to compare his newly designed program with the National Cancer Institute's SmokeFreeTeen project.
According to Bricker, there are currently no verified programs that can help teenagers quit vaping. He stated that even though there is evidence of how many young people use e-cigarettes, there has not been any trials testing the efficacy of applications. E-cigarettes are easy to hide and have become increasingly common among adolescents, including those who were previously unlikely to smoke, such as athletes and academically-focused children.
Meanwhile, due to the hysteria surrounding e-cigarettes and their alleged association with EVALI, Apple removed all 181 e-cigarette related apps from the iOS App Store in 2019. Although Apple users who had already downloaded vaping apps were able to continue using them undisturbed, these apps were no longer available for download.
Some of these applications are highly useful and informative, providing news and/or practical functions such as allowing users to adjust the temperature and other settings on their devices. In response to Apple's actions, PAX Labs, the designer of vaporization technology and devices, has launched a new desktop application for its cannabis vaporizer, which clearly indicates its purpose.
The company stated in a press release, "This was built in response to Apple's removal of vaporizer-related apps from the App Store." Previously, Pax had launched Android and iPhone apps with these useful features, but they were naturally removed by Apple.
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