Background: Smoking is harmful to health. On average, lifelong smokers lose 10 years of life, and about half of all lifelong smokers have their lives shortened by smoking. Stopping smoking reverses or prevents many of these harms. However, cessation services in the NHS achieve variable success rates with smokers who want to quit. Approaches to behaviour change can be supplemented with electronic aids, and this may significantly increase quit rates and prevent a proportion of cases that relapse.

Objective: The primary research question we sought to answer was: What is the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of internet, PC and other electronic aids to help people stop smoking? We addressed the following three questions:
(1) What is the effectiveness of internet sites, computer programs, mobile telephone text messages and other electronic aids for smoking cessation and/or reducing relapse?
(2) What is the costeffectiveness of incorporating internet sites, computer programs, mobile telephone text messages and other electronic aids into current NHS smoking cessation programmes? and
(3) What are the current gaps in research into the effectiveness of internet sites, computer programs, mobile telephone text messages and other electronic aids to help people stop smoking?