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27 November 2014Americas

Wearable technology: seeing the future

Hot on the heels of its wearable technology Google Glass, the tech company has announced it is developing a smart contact lens. While Google Glass uses a head-mounted display, the prototype of this latest device uses a tiny sensor embedded in a contact lens to measure glucose levels in tears.

The project is one of a number of in-eye wearable devices being developed at various universities and research facilities. It seems to endorse the view of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that it could be “just the start of a clever new product category” that could expand to fields as varied as cancer detection, drug delivery, night vision and reality augmentation.

The glucose-sensing lens was developed at the Google X lab in California and first announced by the project’s co-founders, Brian Otis and Babak Parviz, in an official Google blog post in January 2014.

Google filed a patent application in 2012 for a capacitive sensor to be deployed in a contact lens that could potentially detect phenomena such as eyelid movement, blinking, pollution and allergen levels, presence of tears and eye pressure (including changes associated with emotional states), and allow for the possibility of multiple processing chips or devices.

In April this year, Google was granted a separate patent for “microelectrodes in an ophthalmic electrochemical sensor”, including a reader, antennae and processing system, with the capacity to receive power and transmit results wirelessly. The patent notes that human tear fluid contains a variety of inorganic electrolytes, organic solutes, proteins and lipids, and that measuring one or more of these components “provides a convenient non-invasive platform to diagnose or monitor health-related problems”.

The patent protects a glucose-sensing contact lens that could be used by diabetic patients to monitor and control blood glucose levels, as just one example. Such a device would enable glucose monitoring without the traditional invasive finger-prick testing, and could transmit data wirelessly to send alerts about fluctuating levels to the wearer, perhaps to a smartphone.

In July, Google announced a partnership with Alcon, the eyecare division of pharmaceutical company Novartis, under which Alcon will license the smart lens technology from Google for “all ocular medical uses”. Google X and Alcon will collaborate to develop both the glucose-monitoring lens and an application to correct presbyopia—reduced focus for nearby objects with age.

Lenses that could autofocus on an object under gaze, rather like a digital camera autofocus function, would avoid the need for reading glasses in older people.

Going beyond

Novartis believes that miniaturised contact lens technology could have other medical applications. “This is a key step for us to go beyond the confines of traditional disease management, starting with the eye,” chief executive Joseph Jimenez said in a statement.

Since tears also contain a chemical called lacryglobin, which acts as a biomarker for breast, colon, lung, prostate, and ovarian cancers, the technology could also be useful for monitoring cancer patients in remission.

Big corporations are not the only ones to see the potential of the eye in medical diagnostics. ETH Zurich is a Swiss university that routinely patents and seeks collaboration with business partners to commercially exploit research results.

"A smart lens camera could enhance visual input in people with vision problems, for example, giving blind and partially-sighted people warning of an approaching car."

Scientists at ETH have developed ultra-thin, flexible and transparent electronic components that could be used in biological sensors, wearable or implantable devices. One such is a thin-film transistor formed with an ultra-thin membrane that has potential applications for smart contact lenses to measure intraocular pressure, a key risk factor in the development of glaucoma.

University research played a role in Google’s smart lens, which originates from the University of Washington in Seattle, where Parviz and Otis worked before joining Google. The original research was financed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with support from Microsoft.

Google has stated that it wants to work with other companies to develop apps such as measuring and transmission components. It hopes to commercialise the smart lens within five years, and is in discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration about bringing the smart lens to market.

Novartis’s Jimenez believes it will create a “large revenue stream” in the whole of the digital healthcare market, estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth billions of dollars of revenue in the coming years.

The technology has far-ranging applications well beyond the medical field. Google also holds a patent, filed in 2012, for a micro camera that could be incorporated into a contact lens, suggesting that Google Glass capability may one day be available in a less conspicuous form.

The camera would sit at the edge of the contact lens, so it would naturally follow the user’s gaze without intruding on the field of vision. It could allow taking a picture simply by looking at something, perhaps with a zoom function, facial recognition or video capture, with data transmitted wirelessly, for instance to a smartphone.

A smart lens camera could enhance visual input in people with vision problems, for example, giving blind and partially-sighted people warning of an approaching car, detecting when it is safe to cross a road or recognising people they know.

Ultimately it might offer normally-sighted people ‘super-vision’ of the kind portrayed in Terminator films, by processing the transmitted image and relaying it back to the user through the lens, for example with added telescopic, infrared or night vision images.

Google says that users will control the smart lens device by blinking, and the lens will be able to communicate to a smartphone or other peripheral device wirelessly. The smart lens would include a tiny complementary metal oxide semiconductor camera sensor, a control circuit, and antennae to receive power wirelessly.

Data would be sent for image processing to an external source, such as a smartphone or head-mounted display (like Google Glass). The patent provides for a pair of camera lenses, one in each eye.

Lenses for gamers

While this might seem like science fiction, one Seattle company, Innovega, already holds a patent for video contact lens-based eyewear attached to a smartphone that enables augmented reality. The prototype, revealed in January this year, uses a head-borne apparatus panel similar to Google Glass combined with a high-tech contact lens to give gamers a much more detailed display.

The contact lenses refocus light so that users can see images and text that would normally be too close to the eye to be in focus. Rich media content is projected onto a transparent lens that allows the wearer to focus on the virtual media while remaining fully involved in the surrounding environment.

While gamers are the initial target audience, previous prototypes were developed with funding from both the NSF and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the immersive experience has other potential applications including for the military. The manufacturers are also developing an application for use by people with age-related macular degeneration, an eye disease that results in gradual decaying of central vision.

So are the future applications of smart lenses really so wide-ranging? Jeff George, head of Novartis’s eyecare division, certainly seems to think so.

“Google X’s team refer to themselves as a ‘moon shot factory’. I’d view this as better than a moon shot, given what we’ve seen,” he says.