David Crane, the founder and CEO of Smoke Free, is a prominent figure in the digital health industry. With a background in behavioral sciences, David has dedicated himself to leveraging technology to help individuals lead healthier and happier lives. His journey began in 1994 when he started working on the internet, eventually leading to the founding of Smoke Free in 2012 as a dissertation project for his Psychology MSc. This endeavor evolved into a PhD in app-delivered behavior change at UCL, where David delved deep into utilizing science to enhance health technology.
Under his leadership, Smoke Free has emerged as a leading smoking cessation app with nearly seven million downloads and 185,000 5-star reviews. The app is evidence-based and theory-driven, having been proven to more than double quit rates in multiple studies. Notably, Smoke Free has achieved the significant milestone of becoming a prescribable app in Germany, marking a pivotal moment in the digital health landscape. This accomplishment reflects David’s commitment to making a tangible impact on public health by providing accessible and effective tools for smoking cessation.
David’s extensive experience also includes his role as the founder and MD of 23 Ltd, a web development agency, and as an executive director at the International Debate Education Association UK. His multifaceted background underscores his ability to drive innovation and success across diverse domains.
As a thought leader in digital health, David is at the forefront of advocating for a paradigm shift in how technology can be harnessed to address pressing public health challenges. His vision extends beyond Smoke Free, as he emphasizes the need for continuous innovation to combat the behaviors that contribute to preventable illnesses and deaths globally.
In this exclusive interview, we delve into David Crane’s insights on the intersection of technology, behavioral science, and public health, shedding light on his pioneering work and vision for the future of digital health.
Thank you for taking time to share your knowledge and experience with our audience. Can you start by telling the audience about yourself?
Smoke Free was my first entry into the healthcare industry, the app was my Psychology Master’s degree dissertation project, which I started in 2012. This led to a PhD in app-delivered behavior change at UCL and I’ve been full-time on the app ever since.
What gets me out of bed is the desire to help more people stop smoking. There is so much more apps can do to help people quit successfully and I love finding ways to make Smoke Free better.
Can you tell our audience about Smokefree? What is the problem it is addressing and how is it doing so?
Smoking kills seven million people annually and makes millions more seriously ill, it’s the leading cause of preventable illness and death worldwide. Two-thirds of all long-term smokers will die from a smoking-related disease, half in middle age. More than 600 million people alive today will die from smoking unless they quit, a truly staggering figure.
Of the approximately 1.3 billion smokers in the world, 800 million already want to quit and it’s likely that almost all the others will want to at some point. The problem is that smoking is a particularly hard habit to break, 97% of quit attempts end in failure unless support is used. On average, a smoker needs to make 30 attempts before they are successful.
Each year, smoking costs the global economy $500bn in healthcare costs alone. Add lost productivity and social care costs and the figures multiply tenfold. Failing to quit also results in most smokers continuing to spend thousands of dollars per year on cigarettes. Smoking is the textbook definition of a pain point.
Smoke Free provides evidence-based stop smoking support that is easy to access and constantly available. There are 20 different tools in the app ranging from progress indicators showing how the time smoke free is increasing, to 24/7 support from trained stop smoking advisors who answer any question in minutes. Three clinical studies, two evaluations and over 200,000 app store reviews have found the app is effective.
Smoke Free works by combining what scientists say is the best way to stop smoking, with what user experience experts say is the best way to build an app and adding our insight on top. We’ve been doing this for eleven years and have accumulated a wealth of information about the best way to help people quit this habit for good.
How did your background in psychology and your experience in web development contribute to the founding and development of the Smoke Free app?
A lot of what we do in web development is psychology. You need to understand behavior if you’re to build a website that meets the goals of users and the business behind it. My informal background in psychology, by which I mean decades of therapy and more courses, books and groups than you can shake a talking stick at, gave me an understanding of the principles of behavior change and how they work in real life. Combine those things and you get an evidence-based app that hopefully people like to use.
What inspired you to focus on app-delivered behavior change, and how has this approach influenced the design and features of Smoke Free?
I like big problems and smoking is a huge one. Not just in how difficult it is to solve, but how many people struggle with it. Apps are a great way to provide lots of people with support. Best of all, apps can iterate, we can try new approaches on an ongoing basis and build an app that gets ever better at helping people quit. Smoke Free is designed with this aim in mind.
Could you elaborate on the significance of Smoke Free becoming a prescribable app in Germany and its implications for digital health technology?
The implication of what Germany, and other countries, are doing for digital health is tremendously exciting because for the first time, app developers are incentivised to optimize for effectiveness. Most apps optimize for revenue, their goal is to sell more subscriptions, in-app purchases or ads. But digital health apps are paid from the public purse and what these payers want is the most effective app. The payment models they have created reflect this, the better the app works the more revenue that app will generate. This creates a clear incentive for app developers to focus their efforts on making a more effective app. Which is exactly what this field needs and I think will result in some very big developments in how we help people lead healthier lives.
Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for Smoke Free and its potential contributions to improving public health on a global scale?
My aim is to continually make Smoke Free better and take that learning into other areas of behavior change. What we do, fundamentally, is help people develop self-control skills. These are not skills we learn in school or that are passed down to us evolutionarily. On the contrary, we are evolutionarily programmed to let go of self-control around things that feel good because those things used to be scarce. Now they’re plentiful the way to feel good is, ironically, to deny ourselves. That’s how we live lives with fewer illnesses and less pain.
I’m not in favor of constant denial, Oscar Wilde was right when he said “Everything in moderation, including moderation”. However, if we are to resist the pull of fatty foods, sweet foods, alcohol, other drugs, or simply sitting on the couch mindlessly scrolling social media, we’re going to need self-control skills, and I hope my company can help with that.
What are some key lessons or observations from your journey with Smoke Free that could benefit other entrepreneurs and innovators in the digital health space?
There will be times when you’ll want to give up, I’ve had hundreds. To know whether to continue or not I ask myself the fundamentals: Does the app still help? Is there still a need? If the answer to either is No, maybe it is time to stop. But if the answer is Yes or you can get to yes, you should probably carry on. Because if you are meeting a need and can find a way to stay alive, the sales will come eventually.
Contact Details:
- Business website: smokefreeapp.com
- Business phone and email: +44 20 3488 9423, hi@smokefreeapp.com
- Business Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smoke-free-uk/
- Personal Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcrane/
