The start-up called Carrot, is launching its smoking cessation program called Pivot, which “combines innovative mobile-sensor technology with the best evidence-based clinical strategies, and delivers them via a simple, accessible smartphone app.“
The program will also include an FDA approved at-home sensor system which pairs up with smartphones via Bluetooth to track carbon monoxide levels, and a virtual coaching program to promote behavior change. The company’s President and CEO, David S. Utley M.D., said that their goal was to deliver the first “scalable, evidence-based smoking cessation program that can be delivered via a smartphone.”
Seeking to motivate rather than vilify smokers
Utley, who is a surgeon specialized in head and neck cancers, said that the app will be sharing positive messages with smokers rather than foreboding ones. “We don’t vilify smokers,” he said.
Carrot’s program is based on the idea that smokers will be more motivated to quit when they are able to measure their daily levels of carbon monoxide, which will be higher than the levels in non-smokers.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colourless and odourless gas and one of the deadliest components in cigarettes. When inhaled at high levels it can cause sudden illness and death. When inhaled via smoking, CO binds with the red blood cells that would normally carry oxygen around our body, hence diminishes our bloodstream’s oxygen-carrying capacity, and starves our body of the adequate amount of required Oxygen.
Read Further : CNBC
