Telecommunications company Vodafone Australia and Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research have created a mobile application called DreamLab that allows you to contribute to cancer research with your smartphone while you sleep, according to Quartz. Those who wish to participate in the research simply have to download the app and then go to sleep. Overnight, your phone will conduct genetic sequencing tasks and crunch data which is subsequently sent back to the institute and used for cancer research.
"Your smartphone is a small but powerful computer," said Vodafone Australia. "When it's idle - like when you're asleep at night - that power goes untapped. DreamLab puts that power to use for good to fast track cancer research."
DreamLab can help speed up cancer research - the researchers claim that if 100,000 users sign up in the first year they will be able to process data for their projects approximately 3,000 times faster, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Users who install the app have the option of choosing what kind of cancer research they wish to contribute to such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and more, according to The Telegraph.
"Medical research is the key to solving cancer, but one thing slowing progress is the limited access researchers have to supercomputers to crunch their complex data," said the Garvan Institute. "That's where DreamLab comes in."
Although the app is only available for Android devices as of now, an iOS version is currently in development.
