SmokeBeat Shows Impressive Detection Rate of Smoking Episodes in Dalhousie University Feasibility Study

NEW YORK, Oct. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Somatix, a provider of a real-time wearable gesture detection-assisted RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring) platform, announced today the results of a feasibility study testing SmokeBeat, the company's smoking cessation monitoring solution. The results have been published by Cambridge University Press' Journal of Smoking Cessation.

The study, "Using 'Smart' Technology to Aid in Cigarette Smoking Cessation: Examining an Innovative Way to Monitor and Improve Quit Attempt Outcomes," was conducted by Prof. Sean P. Barrett of the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. "The ubiquity of mobile phones presents an opportunity to provide accessible smoking cessation aids to the population at large," said Prof. Sean P. Barrett "Despite the promise of smartphone apps as smoking cessation tools, most apps are not proactive; they require the user to interact with it, often by entering smoking events into the app. Subjects in the study found SmokeBeat's proactive monitoring utilizing a smartwatch paired with a smartphone to be more user-friendly than systems which required them to enter their own smoking episodes."

SmokeBeat utilizes smartwatch technology paired with a smartphone to record smoking events without the user directly entering them into the platform. The app learns and becomes more accurate the more the smoker uses it, with the ability to measure several aspects of smoking behavior, including smoking duration and number of puffs taken. It can also learn individual smoking patterns to predict when smoking episodes are likely to occur and then generate alerts for the smoker to potentially stop a smoking episode before it happens.

Over a two-week period, Prof. Barrett and his team tested the feasibility of using SmokeBeat as a smoking cessation aid. Study participants were dependent smokers not currently attempting to quit. SmokeBeat's cigarette detection rate was measured in laboratory sessions both before and after the two-week period. Researchers found that by the end of the two weeks, SmokeBeat achieved a 100 percent detection rate, when the smartwatch was connected to the smartphone concluding that Somatix's SmokeBeat can detect smoking events in real time. Researchers surmised that SmokeBeat presents an opportunity for a proactive and interactive smoking cessation aid – a potentially useful tool for individuals attempting to quit smoking.

"We always felt confident in our ability to harness Somatix's RPM platform as a solution to fight the leading cause of preventable disease worldwide," said Eran Ofir, CEO of Somatix. "Our gesture detection technology that utilizes wearable sensors to monitor smoking episodes in real time, offers a novel smoking cessation tool, providing the only solution of its kind that does not require smokers to manually log their smoking habits. The research conducted by Prof. Barrett provided us the desired experimental validation showing these outstanding results."

Somatix Co-founder and CEO Eran Ofir will present the company's real-time wearable gesture detection-assisted RPM platform at the upcoming HEALTHCARE ЯEVOLUTION 2018 conference in Orlando, and will join Aetna International's Senior Medical Director, Dr. Lori Stetz for a session entitled, "Innovation in Health Tech | Innovation in Virtual Health and Wearables" on October 29 at 10:00 am.

About Somatix
Somatix is provider of a leading real-time wearable gesture detection-assisted RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring) platform for cost-effective healthcare and wellbeing enhancement. Our technological core – the Somatix real-time gesture detection platform – leverages sensors in commercial off-the-shelf smartwatches, smartbands and IoT connected devices. It additionally employs adaptive Machine Learning and Big Data analytics to passively monitor massive volumes of gesture data, for precision recognition of a range of physiological and emotional indicators – all to facilitate personalized, cognitive behavior therapy incentive-assisted health intervention. Somatix's innovative digital health solutions ultimately enable enterprises, health insurance companies, clinics and elderly caregivers, among others, to increase the treatment adherence and improve the lives of those under their care.

For more information, please visit www.somatix.com. Please follow us on LinkedIn and like us on Twitter.

SOURCE Somatix

Related Links

http://www.somatix.com