Initial experiences of an english-speaking digital assistant for tobacco cessation in India

• Published in: Industrial Psychiatry Journal 2024, Vol.33 (2), p.366
• Main Authors: Ali, Enub, Antony, Nitin, Sachdeva, Ankur, Deshpande, Smita N
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; International agencies; Psychiatric services; Smoking cessation programs
• ISSN: 0972-6748
• DOI: 10.4103/ipj.ipj_280_24

Background: The WHO tobacco control team established the Access Initiative for Quitting Tobacco (AIQT) in July 2020. The AIQT team developed a virtual assistant "Florence" to provide digital counseling services to people willing to quit tobacco. Aim: To assess tobacco users' experience of using WHO digital health assistant "Florence" and to track their behavior changes. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at a tertiary care Teaching Hospital in Delhi-NCR, India from November 2021 to March 2022. A total of 102 English-speaking tobacco users were enrolled through snowballing and online requests to use Florence ( Results: Most participants at baseline, over 3-5 minutes, felt that Florence could not understand their speech (48%), and needed improvement in advice and information on quitting and tobacco use (52%) but felt comfortable interacting with Florence (42.2%). However, participants who re-visited Florence during the next 3 months (12/102) agreed that Florence helped them make a quit plan and used the recommended toll-free quit (9/12). Overall, there was a significant increase in proportion of participants who did not consume tobacco in the last 07 days after using Florence (09 versus 25 of 102, P < 0.01) and made quit plans (07 versus 15 of 102, P < 0.01) compared to baseline. Conclusion: Considering the ease, accessibility, and amount of time spent with this virtual assistant, Florence appears a positive step forward in tobacco cessation. Keywords: Digital, florence, India, online, tobacco cessation, WHO