NEWS | Help Fight Covid-19 Using Your Smartphone

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Help Fight Covid-19 Using Your Smartphone

The Vodafone Foundation and Imperial College London have utilised their successful DreamLab smartphone app, which was launched in the UK in 2017 to help fight cancer, to aid research into Covid-19, and you can help. Read on to find out how.

Brits can help power the research by simply downloading the app onto their smartphones and leaving it to run overnight whilst it’s on charge.

DreamLab crowdsources processing power from smartphones whilst you sleep to create a virtual supercomputer which processes millions of calculations for scientists at Imperial College London. This decreases the time it would normally take the researchers to process the calculations manually, reducing what could take 300 years to just three months.

The project uses Artificial Intelligence to trawl through data and identify existing drugs and food molecules that could benefit those with the infectious disease.  The more people that plug in, the quicker possible treatments will be found. No personal data from the user’s device is affected or used in any way.

Understanding the Corona-AI project

The Corona-AI project is split into two phases:

  1. Phase 1 will identify existing drugs and food-based molecules with anti-viral properties that may benefit those with Covid-19.
  2. Phase 2 will optimise combinations of these drugs and food molecules to provide potential drug treatments and nutritional advice for those with Covid-19.

Once the research is complete, it will be made available to the medical profession to facilitate clinical trials. In addition, any food-related findings will be translated into dietary advice that can be implemented by the medical community for patients recovering from Covid-19.

Vodafone is urging everyone to come together and support the new Corona-AI project – the more people that plug in every night, the quicker potential treatments for those with Covid-19 will be found. 

elp Fight Covid-19 Using Your Smartphone

How to download the app

To download the app, search for DreamLab in the App store for iOS or Play Store for Android. 

Vodafone customers can activate DreamLab for free using either mobile data or Wifi connectivity.  Those on other networks will be asked how much data they would like to donate to power the app, or can connect via Wifi.  

Shell Robshaw-Bryan
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