How smartphones are being used in the fight against cancer

By 2035, according to the World Health Organization, we will see 24m new cancer cases each year—70% more than in 2012. What can phones do to help?

One obvious way is prevention and early detection. E-health applications providing information on cancer risks and helping users detect breast or cervical cancer are already available. Another way, less known, is supporting researchers in their understanding the genetics of cancer—a critical, data-intensive task that requires substantial computing power.

A modern smartphone’s processor is more than 32,000 times faster than the one NASA used to land astronauts on the moon. Multiply this by 2bn (the number of smartphones in operations by 2016), add the fact that a smartphone’s computing power is rarely tapped in its entirety, and the opportunity becomes obvious.

Last year, Samsung, in collaboration with the University of Vienna, released PowerSleep, an Android app that allows users to donate unused processing power to researchers. The app works like an alarm clock. Once set, the app downloads 1mb of data from university servers, processes it, sends it back and repeats the operation until alarm goes off. It only runs when connected to Wi-Fi and when the phone is both plugged in and fully charged, thus ensuring that data plans and usability are unaffected.

The app was an immediate success, ranking in the top ten most downloaded Android apps of the week in Austria, the UK, Canada, France, China and the US. By its fifth week, it has processed more than one terabyte of data.

Beyond using the processing power of today’s smartphones, researchers are also exploring the use of gaming. The main challenge here lies in creating a gaming interface that enables the user to play while processing the data in their original format.

In 2013, Cancer Research UK, in collaboration with Google, Facebook and Amazon AWS, organised a hackathon to solve this conundrum. The result was the game Play to Cure: Genes in Space, which is based on genomic data from 2,000 breast cancer patients.

Launched last year, the game allows players to take the helm of a spaceship as they travel through space. Before each level, players map their course through an asteroid belt, which is nothing other than the genomic data displayed in a more engaging way. As they fly through it, they spot and collect the “alpha substance”, which represents the genetic mutations in the DNA. The information is then sent back to scientists to help them explore the linkages between genetic mutations and cancer.

With cancer on the rise, prevention, rapid data analysis and public awareness are increasingly important. With any luck, some of the help will be in the palm of our hands.

This post first appeared on GE LookAhead. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Andrew Trabulsi is a consultant, author, and entrepreneur with a background in technology forecasting, geopolitics, and economic development policy.

Image: Men are silhouetted against a video screen as they pose with smartphones. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic.