DreamLab - Powering Research

Vodafone Foundation

About this app

Temporarily, DreamLab is being used to support research to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19).

Imagine if you could really make a difference and help to speed up time in the fight against Covid-19 and cancer.

DreamLab is a multi-award winning app from the Vodafone Foundation, in partnership with Imperial College London, which uses the collective power of mobile phones to fast track Covid-19 and cancer research. DreamLab exists to help find answers quicker and the more people who use DreamLab, the faster it works.

Medical research currently generates huge volumes of health data around the world every day, but access to computing power to crunch and make sense of this data is limited. Your mobile device contains a huge amount of computing power needed to run everything from email to music and video streaming apps, but is mostly dormant while you plug it in to charge overnight. DreamLab harnesses this processing power, of yours and thousands of other mobile phones, to examine such health data to look specifically at how existing drugs can be repurposed to help in the fight against cancer.

DreamLab taps into this invaluable resource to find more effective combinations of drugs that can be tailored to patients to improve treatments and save lives. As a Dreamer you can even choose which which project to support and also select how much mobile data the app uses every month (or only on WiFi). Just one PC running 24 hours a day would need 300 years to process the data required to complete the project. However, 100,000 smartphones running DreamLab for six hours a night could fast track the job in just three months.

Download the DreamLab app today and start making a difference to lives in the fight against cancer.

Charge
Download the DreamLab app, choose a project to support and each time your phone is plugged in, charged and connected to the internet, you’ll be helping to save lives in the fight against Covid-19 and cancer.

Sleep
Charge your phone overnight and while you #SleepLikeAHero, DreamLab taps into its unused processing power to support vital cancer research.

Fight Covid-19 and Cancer
Alongside thousands of other DreamLab users, while you sleep you’ll be using your phone to power a virtual supercomputer, capable of processing billions of calculations – and helping fast track research into better ways to fight Covid-19 and cancer.

When you plug your phone in and power DreamLab, it downloads tiny parts of a huge research project from the cloud to calculate and sends the results back to the team at Imperial College London. The more people who power DreamLab, the faster we can find the right drugs and treatments to beat cancer. All you need to do is set up DreamLab once and it will get to work each time you plug your phone in.

To help the fight against Covid-19 and cancer, and find the drugs and treatments needed to fight them, simply download the app (#) and choose which Project you’d like to support. You can also track the contribution you’ve made and keep up to date with news.

DreamLab supports cancer research globally and is powered by the Vodafone Foundation. https://www.vodafone.co.uk/dreamlab/

* A compatible handset is required. Downloading DreamLab will consume mobile data. Once downloaded, DreamLab can be used when your device (i) is connected to a charging source and (ii) has mobile network or WiFi connectivity.

# By downloading, installing or otherwise using the DreamLab application on your device, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions found at https://www.vodafone.co.uk/mobile/dreamlab. If you do not agree to be bound by these Terms, you should not download, install or otherwise use DreamLab Application

Ratings and reviews

I would have given five stars but my own personal belief is that there's always room for improvement: several months ago it would not let me on for a week or two which was frustrating. My biggest frustration is that all too often I will be surprised to see that it has given me one of the other projects to work on rather than the one that I choose. But it's easy to monitor that nightly and switch back if I need to. Overall, I like this app by probably 90%, as the concept is quite noble.

Have used for years but will sadly be uninstalling. Recently, calculations for my projects haven't been crunching every night, and every few weeks, the app will change the project I'm supporting without my concent (although it seems to crunch the calculations for that project without a problem). I tried to send an email using their link in the app, but it was sent back saying the address provided was not found. Very frustrated.

The idea is amazing and very productive, but I normally charge my phone on a regular basis, not only during the night, and cant prevent the app from working automatically. This is a bit frustrating as sometimes i need my phone to charge fast and the app running doesnt allow it. Is there any on/off switch or setting of work between this time range only? If not it would make a huge improvement.

What's new

- Minor bug fixes and enhancements