Wearables for the Eye: Smart Contact Lenses
Ouch?
Google made a splash in 2014 when they announced their plans for a smart contact lens project to be executed by Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences).
It would help diabetics by measuring the glucose levels in tears. It was revolutionary.
A patent they filed in 2016 listed the rather painful-sounding method of:
“…injecting a fluid into a lens capsule of an eye, wherein a natural lens of the eye has been removed from the lens capsule; positioning an intra-ocular device within the fluid in the lens capsule, wherein the intra-ocular device comprises an electronic lens, wherein the electronic lens can be controlled to provide an optical power within a range of optical powers, and wherein the optical power of the electronic lens is controlled in part by an electrical signal applied to the electronic lens; and solidifying the fluid in the lens capsule to form a coupling between the lens capsule and the intra-ocular device, such that accommodation forces can be applied to the intra-ocular device via the lens capsule and coupling.”
If you’re willing to give up the natural lens of your eye, the above sounds great, doesn't it?
Well, too bad. Verily halted this project after many experts pushed back with the fact that tears haven’t been proven to effectively gauge blood glucose levels.
But Google isn’t the only one working on a smart contact lens in the hope of helping diabetics. Microsoft announced a similar project in 2012, while researchers from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea generated a few headlines in regard to their contact lens which they claim can measure glucose levels — and comes with an LED display to notify the wearer when glucose levels become too high. But not much has been heard about the Microsoft contact lenses since, and many cast doubt on the legitimacy of the latter project.
Earlier this year, it was broadcasted that researchers at Purdue University are working on lenses that, “…not only correct vision but also can monitor glucose and medical conditions and be used for ocular pain relief or drug delivery.”
Everyone wants to monitor glucose, apparently.
Still, there are other smart contact lenses being developed that do something besides (purportedly) measure the glucose levels in tears.
In 2016, Samsung was granted a patent in South Korea for a lens that — in addition to projecting images directly onto the eye — has a built-in camera and sensors controlled by blinking á la Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
Fancy, eh?
Sony was also granted a patent in 2016 for a lens capable of recording video á la that episode of Black Mirror with Jodie Whittaker. It’s controlled by blinks as well — sensors in the lens can tell the difference between involuntary and voluntary blinks.
More recently, Theraoptix won the MIT Sloan Healthcare Innovations Prize in March with their lenses designed to deliver drugs to the eye, while Sensimed has been promoting their FDA-approved Triggerfish, which measures an eye’s volumetric changes.
The global smart lens market is expected to reach $7.2 billion (USD) in 2023. With all the innovations happening, will smart lenses soon be commonplace? And if so, are we ready for a world where they are?
