Understanding and preventing the disease's spread from areas of high incidence is a key weapon in the fight against malaria.

The innovative research could also point the way for other studies into infectious diseases, helped by ever growing rates of cell phone usage worldwide, and particularly in the developing world.

"As mobile phone data sets become increasingly available and representative of entire populations, we anticipate that studies like the one we present here will become common for understanding a range of different infectious diseases, as well as for gaining greater insight into human behavior on a population level," the study's authors say.

The WHO's 2011 world malaria report shows that concerted efforts to tackle the disease can make a difference, with death rates down by more than 25% globally since 2000.