Google's new smart contact lens project that acts as a non-invasive glucose monitor could be a godsend to the millions of sufferers of Type I diabetes. For non-diabetics, the lenses could portend an idealized version of our wearable future.
Google announced its work on the smart contact lens on its official blog late Thursday. The project is being developed at Google X, the secret laboratory that has also incubated projects such as Google's self-driving car and Google Glass.
The idea behind the project is to find an alternate way to test and monitor blood glucose levels that doesn't require the user to frequently prick a finger and test their blood with a monitor. A contact lens that would be able to collect and test tears for glucose levels could be a way to limit the invasive nature of finger pricks — while also helping diabetics test more frequently so that they can adjust their insulin intake accordingly.
The contact lenses are made by taking microscopic chips and hair-thin antennas and putting them in-between two layers of soft contact lens material. Google says it is looking at a way to alert the wearer that a level is abnormally low or high, possibly using tiny LED lights.
As a concept, smart contact lenses for diabetics isn't new. As GeekWire reported, the genesis for the current Google project actually got its start at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research Connections. Microsoft detailed aspects of the project back in Dec. 2011, including quotes from then-UW researcher Babak Parviz. Parviz is now one of the co-founders on the project at Google.
The UW contact lens project moved to Google about 18 months ago. Brian Otis, the project's other co-founder, explained the move to Google, telling the Associated Press, "you can take it to a certain level in an academic setting, but at Google we were given the latitude to invest in this project."
According to Google, the contact lens currently being tested was built from scratch at Google X. The challenge with this prototype was about making something that uses standard materials — so that the lenses can actually be worn.
Right now, Google's focus on with the smart contact lenses tends is focused primarily on medical uses — in this case, as a glucose sensor. That said, it's not outrageous to question how this technology could work with something like Google Glass.
In fact, the two projects have a key person in common: Parviz. Parviz is the project lead for Google Glass, which seems like it might make for happy coincidence.
It's also interesting to see this announcement from Google, particularly in light of some of the other innovations taking place in the smart contact lens space. At CES 2014, we looked at Innovega's iOptik eyewear system, which combines a pair of smart glasses with a special pair of contact lenses to create augmented reality and Google Glass-like experiences.
At CES, an iOptik spokesperson told us that the reason they weren't focused on merging the glasses and contact lenses into one product was because of current hardware limitations. "It creates a tiny field of view," the spokesperson told us. "Google Glass is the equivalent of having your smartphone about 24 inches in front of you. The iOptik system is six times the resolution and 20 times the area. It's like looking at a big TV projection, and you can see so much more."
In other words, the challenge is not only making wireless and microprocessing components small enough to fit in a contact lens, but to also be able to project an in-eye image that is large enough to be useful.
Google says it will be at least five years before the glucose monitoring smart lenses reach consumers — and I'm certainly not expecting or predicting that we'll start seeing full-on Google Glass in your eyes any time soon, but it seems to me that this is the most natural and compelling direction for ocular-wearables.
Unlike glasses with a sensor that has to fit over the eye, putting the sensor ON the iris eliminates some of the most discomforting aspects of products like Google Glass: the way they look. Of course, critics might bustle at what near-invisible sensors mean for our privacy, but since this is just fantasy, can we entertain the thought? Moreover, by having bio-sensors on the eye, the opportunity for real-time biometric data — at a level much higher than we can get from a fitness accessory — becomes a real possibility.
We might not see Google Glass in a contact lens overnight, but there's no reason to think that after glucose monitoring, other types of sensors for heart-rate, blood pressure and even detection of specific pathogen or allergens couldn't be a possibility.
The real magic of this project — as with most of what we've seen from the Google X lab — isn't the idea as it exists today, but about the potential that those products and innovations mean for the future.