Quitting smoking is hard — really hard. This smartphone app can help, study finds

There’s an app for everything.

Now there’s even a smartphone app that has proven to be effective in helping cigarette smokers kick the habit, a study by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle found.

iCanQuit, an app that uses acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), proved to be nearly 1.5 times more effective than the National Cancer Institute’s app QuitGuide “in helping smokers quit after 12 months,” according to Fred Hutchinson.

“Our study offers a new approach to quitting smoking,” said Dr. Jonathan Bricker, the study’s lead researcher and professor at Fred Hutch’s Public Health Sciences Division. “By deploying ACT-based methods that focus on acceptance of smoking triggers instead of avoidance of smoking triggers, we believe iCanQuit can help more smokers kick the habit and thereby reduce premature deaths.”

Researchers conducted a large clinical trial with 2,400 adult smokers from across the country. They discovered “for every 100,000 smokers reached with iCanQuit, 28,000 would quit smoking,” according to the research center.

While the National Cancer Institute had no part in conducting the research, it did fund the study.

The app is available on the Google Play store and the App store for iPhone users, the research center says.

“About 80% of lung cancer deaths result from smoking,” the research center says.