Going beyond the relapse peak on social network smoking cessation programmes: ChatBot opportunities

Abstract

Research question: A social network programme called J’arrete de fumer was set up in 2016 in the six French-speaking cantons of Switzerland. It consists of Facebook groups where people agree on a date to quit smoking. A peak of relapse appears during the first three weeks of the programme. This research aims to explore the feasibility of building a Chatbot to help people to get over this peak in future iterations of the programme. Methods: It has been shown that the urge to smoke may be one of the reasons for relapses. Being able to distract users from the idea of smoking during these phases would help them to get through these three first weeks. Due to the large number of participants, a human intervention within the craving time frame is difficult to achieve, but such a constraint would be easier to overcome  with ChatBots. Results: A ChatBot for the Telegram platform has been developed. It offers five different modules to overtake the time frame where the urge to smoke is greatest. Some of these modules, such as motivating comments and factual information, are already well used, but some others are less widely explored, like helping scientific research by classifying images or putting people in touch with each other as another form of distraction. Conclusion: ChatBots offer interesting opportunities for helping smoking cessation communities, as they would help participants during craving time frames and would be able to handle the large number of participants.