The modern smartphone has more processing power than the Apollo computers that put a man on the moon. Now cancer researchers, with limited access to supercomputers, have developed an app that will harness small amounts of power from smartphones around the world to aid research.
The app, DreamLab, runs while the user is asleep and charging their smartphone. It uses limited amounts of data and will work over WiFi if available.
"There are many important research questions we'd like to ask, but some need so much computing power that it would cost too much, or take us years and years," says Warren Kaplan, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney.
"DreamLab gives us free access to a dedicated virtual supercomputer to accelerate our cancer research."
When the smartphone is plugged in and fully charged, each device is given a tiny research problem. It then processes the problem and sends the result back to the research team at Garvan.
With 1 000 users, DreamLab will process research data 30 times faster than what Garvan could do without it. Therefore, if the over 20 million South African smartphone users (as predicted for 2015 by World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck) used DreamLab, research would be processed 600 000 times faster.
DreamLab users first choose which cancer the app will aid research in: breast, ovarian, prostate or pancreatic cancer.
The app allows users to set a monthly data limit of 250MB, 500MB or 1GB. There is also the option to not let the app use mobile data or increase the amount of data used.
The app is free to download in the Google Play Store; a version for iOS is being worked on.
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