Smart Contact Lens Project from Google

(Image yoinked from Tested.com)

Google's X Labs have announced that they are now testing a "Smart Contact Lens" with the view of monitoring glucose levels to help diabetes sufferers. They also plan to add LEDs to the contact lens to let the wearer know when their levels are irregular and that something needs to be done.

Adding an LED to a contact lens is nothing new though, with one of the project's listed founders, Babak Parviz, having successfully used a red LED in a contact lens back in 2008(1).  It would appear from a glance at Babak's work that's available on Google scholar (2) his main focus is on self assembly electronics.

For a more focused look (excuse the pun) at the field of contact lens electronics see this New Scientist article from 2011. It's obviously a little out of date but contains far more info than what's passing around the tech blogs today.

I'm pretty sure that there will be much more to come on this soon as the big news seems to drop each year at the Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) conference. Which is due to be held on the 26th-30th of this month in San Francisco.  

 

References and further reading:

(1) Ho, H; Saeedi, E; Kim, S. S.; Shen, T. T; Parviz, B. A. Micro Ele. Mech. Sys. 2008 

(2) Google Scholar Search

(3) New Scientist article from 2011

(4) MEMs conference 

 

(image yoinked from TechCrunch)

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