New Smart Contact Lens from Google to Detect Glucose Levels in Tears

Google has announced that it is testing a type of "smart contact lens" that can accurately measure the levels of glucose in the tears of diabetes patients. The lens is expected to make glucose monitoring easier.

The device has a tiny wireless chip and small sensor embedded within two layers of the soft contact lens. The Smart Contact Lens is still in its infancy stage. Researchers have conducted multiple clinical trials and are now refining their product.

"We're testing prototypes that can generate a reading 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 thresholds," Google X Lab said in a blog.

Google said that it is in talks with the Food and Drug Administration to get the product into the market.

Why Contact Lens for Glucose Monitoring?                                                                                

 Some 347 million people around the world currently have the chronic disease. Living with the condition is like a part time job, where the patient needs to regularly monitor sugar levels.

Most people need to prick their fingers every few hours to measure glucose levels.

Other researchers have tried creating biomaterials that could detect sugar levels in several body fluids such as tears, saliva and urine. Recently, another team of researchers reported that Breathalyzers could be used to monitor glucose levels.

The Google[X] division's "smart contact lens" is expected to help diabetics manage their condition by detecting levels of sugar in their tears.

As pointed out earlier, this isn't the first time that tears have been promoted as a promising body fluid for obtaining glucose measurements. Previously, Jeffrey LaBelle, a biomedical engineer at Arizona State University told Livescience that the level of glucose in tears is slightly less than that in the blood, which means any device that aims to use tears must be highly sensitive. Also, glucose is a stress responder, meaning that elevated stress levels can give an inaccurate reading.