DreamLab is an app by Vodafone Foundation (UK registered charity number 1089625) that uses the collective power of smartphones to fast track cancer and covid-19 research. Researchers need supercomputers to crunch complex data. 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 research team. The more people who power DreamLab, the faster we can complete critical research. DreamLab was originally developed in 2017 in Australia by Vodafone Foundation AU, and following a successful launch was updated and expanded globally by Vodafone Group Foundation. In 2020, following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the app was repurposed to fight coronavirus in partnership with Imperial College London.

The creative idea is: Fight Covid-19 in your sleep. This idea is born from several parts. Firstly, the idea to use the power of sleeping users’ mobile phones to form an enormous super computer. Secondly, the idea to call it DreamLab, which simultaneously allows people to understand the purpose of the app and feel like they can join in. Thirdly, the idea to repurpose the technology, to fight against coronavirus and help tackle the global pandemic. These parts of the idea have come together at this moment in time to form a truly extraordinary “technology creative idea” that is genuinely making the world a better place, one calculation at a time.

The strategy is to provide people with a simple means to take part in the fight. We know that people use their mobile phones for many different and varied things… why not give them the chance to use a mobile in a new way? The partnership with Imperial College provided the scientific foundation with access to the research project, and then Vodafone’s technology with the app and scale was used to invite an international audience to take part. A global integrated digital campaign was used to to raise awareness and encourage people to volunteer the processing power of their smartphones by directing them to the App Store and Google Play Store to download the app.

The core of the execution is the simple addition of a new section in the app that allows you to connect your mobile phone to the Corona AI project, analyzing how different combinations of drug and food molecules interact with coronavirus strains. TV and social media led the charge on getting people to download the app. Vodafone senior staff helped promote involvement on LinkedIn, whilst an influencer campaign took the fight to the other main platforms. Activations with our partners like Porsche extended the reach. Infomercials were used to help people understand how to use the app, and to give an insight into the scientific process behind it all. Digital stickers were provided to give people a more tangible reward for taking part to go along side the intangible but much larger reward of taking part in the fight against the global pandemic.

The campaign has reached 464m people, generating 1.15 billion impressions. 738,000 people have downloaded DreamLab in the year since it was repurposed to fight Covid-19 (over the previous 3 years 448,000 people had downloaded the app). This has provided 7,776.64 hours of computing time. This time has enabled over 200m calculations to be processed, investigating over 300 billion molecular combinations.

It has also been proof of concept that this model of smart phone connections creating a super computer can work.

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