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We’re still a bit of ways away from our Terminator-like future where our eyes can feed us information about anything and everything, but we’re about to take a step forward thanks to Novartis. They’ve announced that they are contracting Google’s smart contact lenses technology currently being worked on by the Google X team, though these aren’t being readied for your everyday consumer.
Novartis says they have interest in the technology to address two key issues in healthcare:
- Helping diabetic patients manage their disease by providing a continuous, minimally invasive measurement of the body’s glucose levels via a “smart contact lens” which is designed to measure tear fluid in the eye and connects wirelessly with a mobile device;
- For people living with presbyopia who can no longer read without glasses, the “smart lens” has the potential to provide accommodative vision correction to help restore the eye’s natural autofocus on near objects in the form of an accommodative contact lens or intraocular lens as part of the refractive cataract treatment.
Those are very specific use-cases that won’t apply to a healthy helping of people. It’s telling that Novartis is so confident in Google’s miniaturization of electronics that they want to make a strong push at this point in time. It doesn’t automatically confirm that the technology has reached a level of maturity fit for consumer-ready products, but it does mean they’re getting quite close.
So no, you won’t have the equivalent of Google Glass embedded into your eyes anytime soon, but this can only help move us toward a future where smart contact lenses are less taboo and more fitting for everyday life. We’re definitely keeping our eyes peeled (pun totally intended) for what happens next.
[via Business Wire]
I’m curious to know how it works, don’t you have to soak contacts in solution every night? And my god what if you dropped one or it fell out! That’s a lot of money I’m thinking..
As a contact wearer of 5+ years, I only dropped a few during my first year of wearing. As long as it doesn’t get a whole bunch of crap on it, you can still wash it off and use it. I’ve never had one fall out. I don’t think that should be a great concern.
Where u put battery and NFC/BT ship…???
It won’t have a battery, it’s supposed to work off of induction.
I just wanna know how there gonna put ads on it lol
Being a type 1 diabetic, I wonder how accurate tear duct glucose readings actually are…research time….
Fellow type 1 here. I’m curious as well.
This would be a lot better than having to get stuck with a CGMS probe (in addition to the pump)
I’m sure it will take 10 years to come to the market after our lousy FDA gets ahold of it anyway.
will it have a 150 GB RAM? /srs