4 minutes | Tuesday, 15 May 2018
Vodafone Foundation UK and researchers at Imperial College London have teamed up to recruit smartphone users to help in the fight against cancer. Smartphone users are being called on to download the DreamLab app and turn it on while they sleep. The collective processing power of the smartphones will be used to help analyse huge volumes of data.
It is easy for all smartphone users across the UK to become overnight heroes in the fight against cancer – by downloading the DreamLab app, smartphone users can help to enable huge volumes of data to be processed which will speed up much-needed cancer research in the UK.
As part of the project, called DRUGS (Drug Repositioning Using Grids of Smartphones),
a team led by Kirill Veselkov in the Department of Surgery & Cancer at Imperial has
designed an algorithm that breaks down enormous datasets into small chunks. These small data chunks will then be analysed by Imperial’s cancer research team. While traditional cancer treatment methods are dictated by the type of cancer a patient has, the research aims to use genetic profiles to find the best cancer treatment for individuals. Imperial’s DRUGS Project currently calculates the likely effects of over 10,000 existing treatments on nine different types of cancers.
Joining us to discuss this new piece of tech and explain exactly how it works and how you can get involved is Dr Kiril Veselkov from the Faculty of Medicine & Department of Surgery & Cancer at Imperial College London and Kate Wright, Head of Innovation at Vodafone.