'Smart' contact lenses for health monitoring, information

Fast Company does run the gamut and here is an article that happily does not slam into a metaphorical brick wall. From their Design section, which has real designers blogging on topics in their field, is Will Smart Contact Lenses Be the Bluetooth Headsets of the Future? Stuart Karten of SKD opines on solar powered lenses with LED information displays (University of Washington) or his idea of ‘assisted living’ lenses which give food calorie counts or the GPS for the nearest gym. Other than the ‘creep factor’ for many of putting a foreign object in the eye, Ed. Donna (who lost that at age 15 with her first pair of corrective lenses) muses on some other factors…distraction worse than the head down-sidewalk strut of the smartphone-addicted, corneal abrasions (as one ages the eye dries out) and competition with the floaters that one gets as the years pile on. Needless to say, radio transmissions so close to the eye might result in some other cellular problems! An idea better in theory than reality, perhaps.

Contact lenses for diabetics that change color via nanoparticles in the hydrogel of the lens itself that detect the glucose level in tears have been in development for some years (based on a quick Google search). This ABC News (US) recap (probably from 2010) discusses. Color Change Lenses Check Blood Sugar. Any reader information regarding FDA review status appreciated.

2 thoughts on “'Smart' contact lenses for health monitoring, information

  1. I think I prefer the sound of this health monitoring to the ‘smart toilet’ concept intimated in the article highlighted in the post on Telecare Aware on 5 March “Home telehealth: passive or not?”

  2. Contact lenses should be used for one purpose – vision correction. There are already smart monitors for diabetes sufferers and there is already reality augmentation technology built into the latest smart phones. None of these things require you to put something in your eye! Just my 2 cents!

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