Effectiveness of mobile phone applications for tobacco cessation: An umbrella review

Background: Mobile Health (mHealth), leveraging nearly 4.5 billion people actively use mobile phone and internet, can be crucial in promoting tobacco cessation. This umbrella review aimed to assess the effectiveness of mobile phone applications in achieving this outcome.

Methods: Searches were conducted in databases like Medline, EMBASE, PubMed Central, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and Cochrane library from their inception till June 2022, without language restriction. Quality assessment was carried out using the AMSTAR-2 tool. The narrative synthesis findings were presented in terms of the overall effect size reported by the individual systematic review along with the heterogeneity measures and risk of bias assessment findings.

Results: We included 11 reviews, most of which had critical weaknesses in certain domains. Among these, three reviews conducted meta-analyses providing pooled estimates, but the effect sizes were non-significant and imprecise, indicating that mobile phone applications did not have a significant effect on tobacco cessation. Only three reviews concluded a promising role for mobile phone applications in tobacco cessation, particularly when these applications were based on theoretical constructs or combined with face-to-face interventions.

Conclusion: Our review indicates that mobile phone applications could play a promising role in tobacco cessation. However, using a single mobile phone application without any theoretical construct may not sufficiently drive behavioural change to reduce tobacco usage.