Smart Necklace to Help Quit Smoking

Researchers from Northwestern University have developed a smart necklace resembling a lapis blue pendant that can help one quit smoking. The pendant tracks heat signatures from lit cigarettes in real time, and how much smokers inhale, and the time between puffs. It completely maintains a smoker’s privacy, and only tracks heat, and not the visuals. The goal of the smart necklace is to intervene to prevent smokers from relapsing after they quit. Details such as when a person lights a cigarette, when they hold it to their mouth and take a puff, how much they inhale, how much time they take between two consecutive puffs, and how long they have the cigarette in their mouth are called smoking topography. The device achieved an F1-score of 0.9 for puff detection in the laboratory, and 0.8 in the wild. The authors noted, SmokeMon has the potential to facilitate timely smoking cessation interventions.