I commented yesterday that sending smartphones to Africa to aid in the fight against Ebola might not be a good idea, according to some critics. And alternative might be to bring the information-processing aspect of the war on Ebola to smartphones—and computers and tablets—here.

Brandon Bailey at AP writes, “IBM has teamed with scientists at Scripps Research Institute in southern California on a project that aims to combine the power of thousands of small computers, to each attack tiny pieces of a larger medical puzzle that might otherwise require a supercomputer to solve.”

Bailey quotes Erica Ollmann Saphire, a biomedical researcher at Scripps, as saying, “”This could let us do in months what it would otherwise take years and years to do.” The distributed processing can help her analyze compounds to see which ones might be most effective in attacking vulnerable sections of the Ebola molecule.

Device owners willing to donate processing power can download the necessary software at www.worldcommunitygrid.org. It works on Windows and Apple computers and Android devices. In addition to fighting Ebola, World Community Grid applies distributed computing technology to battling mosquito-borne diseases, improving cancer treatments, and doubling carbon-based solar-cell efficiency. The initiative is approaching its tenth anniversary.