JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Wearable sensors are being explored as a challenging way to accurately identify smoking behaviors by measuring physiological and environmental factors in everyday activities. Although they hold potential benefits for aiding smoking cessation, no single wearable device currently achieves high accuracy in detecting smoking events.

Objective:

This scoping review aims to provide an updated summary of wearable sensor applications for monitoring smoking and smoke exposure, focusing on both single-sensor and multi-sensor approaches.

Methods:

According with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR), an electronic search strategy consisting of the following keywords ("biosensors" OR "biosensor" OR "sensors" OR "sensor") AND ("smoking" OR "smoke") was conducted on the PubMed, MEDLINE, and Web of Science databases.

Results:

On a total of 28 studies included in the present scoping review published between 2012 and 2022, 9 described wearable devices, 15 multisensory systems and 4 other strategies to detect cigarette smoke exposure. Included studies provide details about the design and/or application of wearable sensors based on elastic band to detect to different aspects of tobacco smoke exposure (e.g arm, wrist, and finger movements, lighting events). There were also studies which proposed a system composed of differnt sensors modalities (e.g. Personal Automatic Cigarette Tracker (PACT), PACT 2.0 and AutoSense).

Conclusions:

Further research is needed to enhance the accuracy and usability of these devices, both to gain a better understanding of the health implications related to smoking and to develop public health strategies.