Sleeping smartphone users could power Australian researchers to a dream cancer breakthrough by forming a makeshift supercomputer.
Melbourne's Garvan Institute of Medical Research launched a mobile app on Tuesday encouraging mobile owners to authorise handset access to create a collective smartphone processor to compute cancer data.
The program, dubbed the DreamLab app, works by users donating nominated data on their phones to form a supercomputer that medical researchers can use to process a "tsunami of complex information" - all while the phone remains idle and connected to a power source.
The more Australians who download and use DreamLab the faster cancer research information can be processed, Garvan Institute's Samantha Oakes says.
"It's only through medical research that we'll be able to solve cancer," Dr Oakes said.
"Medical research generates a vast amount of complex data and information that must be analysed in order to make the next discovery.
"We have a tremendous opportunity to use our phones to help speed up research."
The app helps decode DNA sequences of cancer patients, allowing scientists to detect, diagnose and treat the disease better and quicker.
In trials, 150,000 DreamLab users gave doctors the power to crack cancer-related research problems at twice the speed, the institute claims.
Those who use the innovative iOS and Android app can contribute a minimum 50 megabytes of data each month, while also choosing which cancer decoding project to support.
