An MIT Technology Review article from Suzanne Jacobs explains how smart contact lenses could be used to deliver drugs, sense intraocular pressure, and even enable night vision and augmented reality.
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Jacobs says that Google and Novartis are teaming up to develop contact lenses that monitor glucose levels and automatically adjust their focus; possibly just the start of a clever new product category of smart contact lenses that enable cancer detection and drug delivery to reality augmentation and night vision—offering unique opportunities for both health monitoring and enhancement.
One of the Novartis-Google prototype lenses contains a device about the size of a speck of glitter that measures glucose in tears. A wireless antenna then transmits the measurements to an external device--designed to ease the burden of diabetics who otherwise have to prick their fingers to test their blood sugar levels.
Glucose isn't the only thing that can be measured from tears rather than a blood sample; tears also contain a chemical called lacryglobin that serves as a biomarker for breast, colon, lung, prostate, and ovarian cancers. Monitoring lacryglobin levels could be particularly useful for cancer patients who are in remission, and drug delivery is another future use for smart contacts. The autofocusing lens is in an earlier stage of development, but the goal is for it to adjust its shape depending on where the eye is looking, which would be especially helpful for people who need reading glasses. A current prototype of the lens uses photodiodes to detect light hitting the eye and determine whether the eye is directed downward.
In Sweden, a company called Sensimed is working on a contact lens that measures the intraocular pressure that results from the liquid buildup in the eyes of glaucoma patients, and researchers at the University of Michigan are using graphene to make infrared-sensitive contact lenses that might one day provide some form of night vision without the bulky headgear.
Per the video above, the Seattle-based company Innovega has developed a contact lens with a small area that filters specific bands of red, green, and blue light, giving users the ability to focus on a very small, high resolution display less than an inch away from their eyes without interfering with normal vision. That makes tiny displays attached to glasses look more like IMAX movie screens. Together, the lens and display are called iOptik.
SOURCE: MIT Technology Review; http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529196/what-else-could-smart-contact-lenses-do/
