BEIRUT: A rodeo-esque tune rings out as Samer El Gharib is speaking. “Oh, this is how it notifies me to smoke,” said the founder and CEO of Slighter, a smart lighter intended to help smokers quit their habit in 100 days.
“This is the first invention in smoking cessation tools that will actually ask you to smoke, instead [of] to not smoke,” Gharib said of his palm-sized prototype. It is not as contradictory as it may sound.
“I started it because I wanted to quit smoking,” the 43-year-old Zahle native said, noting failed attempts with interventions such as nicotine patches, e-cigarettes, and acupuncture. “It’s very hard to quit smoking cold turkey,” he added, “and I thought, what if we have a lighter that would record your smoking habit and reteach you how to smoke by notifying you when to smoke ... and the smart algorithm would reduce one cigarette at a time until you reach zero.”
From Days 1-7 of the program, Slighter records the number of times it is lit each day, taking the figure to indicate the user’s daily cigarette consumption. (To account for multiple attempts to light a cigarette, it will count all usage within three minutes as one action.)
Having established a baseline, from Day 8 onward, Slighter will only produce a flame when it emits a notification. Upon hearing the ringtone, the user can light Slighter and smoke a cigarette, or press the “skip” button.
For the next five days, the number of notifications will match the user’s daily cigarette consumption recorded over Days 1-7. But on Day 13, the algorithm will begin to reduce the number of notifications by one every five days. So in theory, those smoking a pack (20 cigarettes) per day will reach 0 cigarettes in 100 days.
“For a smoker, it’s not a big deal to reduce one cigarette [per day],” said Gharib, who used to smoke a pack daily. (He said he has cut down to 15 cigarettes per day after a five-week trial with his prototype.)
Knowing well the habits of smokers, Gharib has included “cheat” and “friend” buttons. Pressing the first allows the user to light Slighter when there isn’t a notification, and the latter is intended for lighting a fellow smoker’s cigarette.
While users may try to cheat using the friend button, Gharib said Slighter will catch on. As smokers tend to light up every 30-45 minutes, use of the friend button at these times will be interpreted by Slighter as cheating. If the algorithm detects a pattern of this, it will create a new baseline and restart reducing notifications from there.
“If you follow the algorithm we made for you to quit, we’re going to help you,” Gharib said, emphasizing that users must take quitting seriously in the first place. “If you don’t want to help yourself, we cannot help you.”
Moreover, a smartphone app provides added encouragement. The interface displays statistics such as the user’s current daily cigarette consumption; the rate of progress; the number of times the cheat, friend, and skip buttons have been pressed; and a countdown to the next notification.
The app, which will be free to download regardless of whether one owns a Slighter, also has a social networking aspect. Users can add each other as “friends” to monitor each other’s progress and send messages and goodwill icons.
Gharib, a former TV actor who heads up the corporate promotions department at MTV News, voraciously reads academic studies about public health and behavioral science to research his invention. According to the 2010 National Health Interview Survey in the U.S., nearly 70 percent of adults would like to quit smoking. Other U.S. studies on using computerized devices to reduce tobacco consumption have also had promising results.
Supported by an angel investor, Gharib has been working with an engineer on a prototype since 2011. A second engineer and a medical doctor serve as consultants.
“We’re facing many problems making the prototype in Lebanon because we’re not very sophisticated here,” he said, noting that Slighter is still under research and development. “If we were living in Canada or the U.S., we would be able to progress much quicker.”
While the first prototype, comprised of two bulky hand-sized boxes strapped together, performed the basic functions, it proved to be impractical.
“You know the situation in Lebanon; [the device] looks more like a bomb than a lighter, so I was holding this all day and people were looking at me,” he recalled. “When I went to ABC or any mall, and [security] checked us, they went like, What is this? Stay away!”
The second prototype, which is much smaller and streamlined, is still rough.
Currently, Slighter works with a London manufacturer, shipping test materials back and forth, which makes for a “very long process.”
But after participating in the UK Lebanon Tech Hub accelerator this past summer, Slighter was one of ten start-ups chosen to attend a six-month program of training and networking in London. Starting November, it will bring Gharib within walking distance of his manufacturer. He is determined to finalize the prototype and conduct testing while in London.
In further validation of his project, Gharib recently secured funding from Berytech. Slighter also made it to the final ten startups at IE Business School’s International Venture Day in Paris last month.
Gharib plans to target the U.S. and Europe because of their strong legal protections, reliable postal systems, and affluent consumers who use smart wearable devices that promote health. The West also has a significantly larger population than Lebanon, which means a greater number of smokers despite its lower rates of smoking.
But “out of moral thinking,” Gharib also plans to launch Slighter in Lebanon, where the adult prevalence of smoking is 38.5 percent (46.8 percent for adult men), according to 2009 research by AUB.
His team is “facing a very hard time having long meetings together without me smoking,” he admitted, “so I’m going to try to quit while in London using [the finalized] Slighter.”
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on November 02, 2015, on page 15.
0 comments:
Post a Comment