Google Unveils Smart Contact Lens That Monitors Glucose Levels in Patients with Diabetes

Google announced Thursday that it is testing a smart contact lens that measures the levels of glucose in tears in people suffering from diabetes.

Diabetes is a growing problem around the world and living with the condition is like a full-time job. To make diabetes management easier, GoogleX lab is working on a smart contact lens that is developed to help people with diabetes measure their glucose levels.

The introduction of the smart contact lens was announced on their official blog.

This prototype will take a minimum of five years to hit the market and is one of the various medical devices built by companies to make glucose monitoring easy when compared to the traditional blood testing, reports Associated Press.

Google's smart contact lens can measure the levels of glucose in tears with the help of a minute wireless chip and tiny glucose sensor that is embedded between two different layers of the flexible contact lens material. They are testing whether this prototype can produce a reading of the glucose levels once per second.

"We're also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we're exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain threshold," Google said.  The lens was developed at the Clandestine GoogleX lab.

The team has also conducted clinical studies to further improve the prototype.

"It doesn't look like much, but it was a crazy amount of work to get everything so very small," Brian Otis, one of the lead researchers at Google, told the AP

Currently, Google is on a hunt for partners with experience in introducing similar products to the market. Before going mainstream, it has to be approved by FDA, which will test the accuracy and safety of the lens.