Image Credit : DreamLab Press Kit
Project Overview
DreamLab is an Android smartphone app that gives Australians the power to help fast-track a cure for cancer while they sleep at night. DreamLab works by pooling the processing power of mobile devices to create the nation’s first "smartphone supercomputer" for cancer research. Allowing the Garvan Institute of Medical Research to speed up research into some of Australia’s biggest killers including breast, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancer.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
b2cloud (Technology Developer)
Vodafone Foundation (Client)
Amazon Web Services (Server Provider)
Garvan Institute of Medical Research (Data Provider)
Project Brief
Vodafone Foundation’s purpose lies in supporting charities to harness the power of mobile technology to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians. In Australia, 1 in 2 people will be diagnosed with cancer by the age of 85. It's a leading cause of death and costs the health system more than $4.5B annually. However, as cancer research deals in very big data sets, the pace of research and the ability to make discoveries is limited by access to costly supercomputers.
Dreamlab was envisaged as a way to address the challenges faced by cancer researchers - an opportunity to accelerate the rate of research by harnessing the processing power of smartphones.
Developing such an ambitious project required a development team with the perfect mix of technical expertise and passion for building impactful mobile technology. Vodafone partnered with b2cloud for this challenge, to architect and develop the back-end system using Amazon Web Services and design and build the mobile applications to make this a seamless experience for users.
Project Need
80% of Australians own a smartphone and most smartphones sit idle for around 7-8 hours per day. At the same time, cancer will affect 1 in 2 men, and 1 in 3 women by the age of 85. With so many affected, many of us feel compelled to help - we set up cancer Foundations, raise money, grow Mo's, run marathons and more but can sometimes feel the need to do something more tangible and direct to find a cure.
With Dreamlab, while a smartphone is plugged in and fully charged, the app automatically downloads and solves a small cancer research problem. The result is then sent back to Garvan researchers via the Amazon cloud – like a giant crossword puzzle, with each user solving a different clue. For Garvan cancer researchers, DreamLab not only provides free access to a crucial computing resource, it also has the potential to greatly speed up cancer research by the institute.
To date, the app has been downloaded by 55,000 users. With 100,000 users, researchers will be able to crunch data approximately 3,000x faster than the current rate and with five million users, that increases to 150,000x faster.
User Experience
Quantitative research with Vodafone customers and qualitative research with employees was conducted in order to test attitudes towards the concept, app experience, storyboard design and promotional materials.
These insights were crucial for the subsequent app development. For example, both the app walkthrough and the promotional materials proactively addressed concerns that were identified through this research.
One of the main goals of the project was to create an experience where making a meaningful contribution to cancer research was as simple as possible. We also wanted to ensure that concerns of draining battery life by using the phone's CPU were addressed.
App User Experience:
The user Downloads DreamLab from Google Play and completes the walkthrough, setting preferences for the type of research they're interested in, data allowance for mobile and WiFi, contact details and notifications.
The app works when the phone is plugged in and charging. It automatically starts when the phone reaches 95% charge and will stop solving research problems when the phone is unplugged. Users can also choose to start or stop the processing at any time.
Users can also update their preferences (research, data allowance etc.) at any time via the settings menu.
Project Marketing
DreamLab was launched with a fully integrated campaign amplified across PR, social media, Vodafone Retail, Partner and Owned channels in November 2015. Coverage highlights include:
Print
• Australian Financial Review
• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Age
Broadcast TV
• Channel 9 Today Show
• Channel 9 A Current Affair
• Channel 7 News (nationally)
Online
• Huffington Post
• Mashable
• SMH.com.au
• Theage.com.au
• AFR.com.au
• BBC.com
The social media campaign to drive awareness reached 1 million unique Australians.
Project Privacy
Private Information:
The app accesses the smartphone’s processor and uses a small amount of storage. DreamLab will only access the files it has created in the files directories and app will never access any personal information on a phone.
Medical Research:
DreamLab analyses somatic mutations from cancer patients that have been de-identified for research purposes. Garvan has sourced this data from the published studies of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).
Contact Information:
No personal information of any kind is required to use the app. Any contact details a user provides will only be used to send a quarterly update on Garvan’s research progress. This is on an opt-in basis and can be removed at any time through the app's settings.
Tags
Health
From ground-breaking apps accelerating medical research to apps helping consumers make healthier choices, we're looking for apps that are making health information and medical services more accessible to all.
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