The smartphone can prevent premature death
Smartphones can easily help reduce mortality among adults in Norway and most other countries.
We have, probably as the first in the world, developed and tested a smartphone solution that can save lives with the help of a short survey.
The most important cause of premature death in most countries in the world is non-communicable diseases:
- Cancer
- Cardiovascular disease
- Chronic respiratory diseases
- Diabetes
Four of the risk factors for these diseases are the same: Tobacco use, too much alcohol, too little physical activity, and unhealthy diet.
Simple solution
By collecting data on the risk factors on the smartphone and giving a customized feedback to each individual, one can put in place preventive measures that hit the right target group at the right time, and thus help to reduce the number of premature deaths. Our pilot study shows that it works. A simple smartphone solution helps reduce premature death.
Global health goal
Norway has joined the World Health Organization (WHO)'s goal of reducing premature death from these diseases by a third by 2030, compared to the 2015 level. To achieve this goal, we need knowledge about how the occurrence of the four mentioned risk factors changes over time. We knew that no data was collected annually on these risk factors in Norway, and we wanted to do something about this.
Conducting two surveys
In the autumn of 2019, the project sent out a text message(SMS), with an invitation to answer lifestyle-related questions to 11,000 people aged 16-69. These were randomly selected from the National Register (1000 from each of the eleven counties). Almost 22 percent chose to respond to the main survey.
For the second survey, a random sample of 100 people from each county who had not responded to the main survey was invited. All data, except county of residence, were self-reported.
The way forward
Our pilot study is now part of the big EU-funded project WARIFA, which is coordinated by the Norwegian Centre for E-health research, and where we from UiT are partners. Here we hope to further develop the idea of giving personal feedback to the participants based on what they answer to questions about risk factors. The goal of WARIFA is to develop a personal risk alert model via an artificial intelligence solution. This can then be used for lifestyle changes and to prevent premature death of the four non-communicable diseases.