A framework for smoking cessation in the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia using smart mobile phone technologies (Smoke Mind)

The use of mobile phones technologies for improved healthcare and wellbeing has increased dramatically in recent years, especially in the Arabian Gulf region. However, very few studies to date have addressed the use of smart mobile health technologies for smoking cessation in the region. This paper proposes a smart mobile health solution tailored to assist with smoking cessation in the Arabian Gulf, and in particular in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). It presents a framework for a smartphone-based system designed according to the requirements analyzed from a specific survey conducted to identify the smoker needs and medical staff needs identified from the interviews from the KSA user´s perspective. The outcome of this survey suggests that such system architecture needs to include the m-health platform, decision support system based on data mining techniques to provide an optimised information management process to the smokers in the KSA community.