Happy: Cancer Prevention Using Smartphones

Tobacco and alcohol consumption, excessive sun exposure and lack of physical exercise are important risk factors for cancer. In fact, more than half of cancer cases are due to wrong behavioural options; if everyone adopted a healthier lifestyle, cancer incidence would fall dramatically. Information campaigns are critical to raise cancer awareness but they simply are not enough to promote behaviour change.The main purpose of the work presented in this paper is to develop a smartphone app, capable of inducing behaviour changes on individuals. A cancer prevention app called Happy was designed and is currently being tested. Preliminary results from a feasibility study show that Happy might be an effective health promotion app, capable of persuading users to change their behaviour towards cancer prevention.