Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 9, 2021
Date Accepted: Aug 18, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Sep 12, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Chatbots for Smoking Cessation: Scoping Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Despite significant progress in reducing tobacco use over the past two decades, tobacco still kills over 8 million people every year. Digital interventions such as text messaging have been found to help people quit smoking. Chatbots, or conversational agents, are newer digital tools that mimic instantaneous human conversation and therefore could extend the effectiveness of text messaging.
Objective:
This scoping review aims to assess the extent of research in the chatbot literature for smoking cessation and provide recommendations for future research in this area.
Methods:
Relevant studies were identified through searches conducted in MEDLINE, APA PsycINFO, Google Scholar and Scopus as well as an additional search on JMIR, Cochrane Library, Lancet Digital Health, and Digital Medicine. Studies were identified if they were conducted with tobacco smokers, were conducted between 2000 to 2021, were available in English and included a chatbot intervention.
Results:
Of the 323 studies identified, 10 studies were included in the review. Some studies noted an improvement in smoking cessation measures. However, the number of studies was limited and most had methodological or quality concerns.
Conclusions:
More research is needed to make a firm conclusion of the efficacy of chatbots for smoking cessation. Researchers need to provide a more in-depth description of the chatbot functionality, mode of delivery, and theoretical underpinnings. Clinical Trial: na
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.