A Novel Take on Alcohol Screening in a Pan-European Project: The Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool

Digitalization offers powerful opportunities to streamline the screening of risky and harmful alcohol use. The pan-European project, led by IMHPR Scientist Dr. Charlotte Probst in collaboration with the WHO European Office for Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases and several European research institutes, developed and piloted the prototype of the Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool (AAA-Tool), a mobile app to assess drinking behaviors and screen for risky and hazardous alcohol use.

The AAA-Tool is based on WHO's well-established Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and comprises interactive, culturally informed animation features to facilitate reporting of individual alcohol consumption. Instead of inquiring about the number of standard drinks consumed, it enables the user to choose a beverage and drinking vessel from a region-specific selection and fill in the amount consumed. The prototype has been optimized for and tested in Russia; further country versions are underway.

To project works closely with experts from several countries and employs stakeholder assessments and user testing to inform the alcoholic beverages and drinking vessels displayed in each country version and ensure intuitive usability of the AAA Tool.

The AAA-Tool prototype has been tested in a first pilot study in a primary healthcare setting in Moscow and Vologda (Russia). A sample of 55 patients and 15 healthcare practitioners helped evaluate the usability and acceptability of the AAA-Tool. The largely positive results underline the AAA-Tool’s potential to provide a novel approach to alcohol assessment in primary healthcare.

The team is currently working on piloting further country versions and is planning the validation of the AAA-Tool against an established screening test, such as the AUDIT.