Non invasive blood glucose check solution no easy task!! ... Alphabet stops its project to create a glucose-measuring contact lens for diabetes patients
Christina Farr | @chrissyfarr
CNBC.com
In a show of transparency, Verily posted a blog post on Friday explaining why it is hitting the pause button on its glucose-sensing contact lens.
The project was first announced in 2014, back when Verily was known as Google Life Sciences.
It will shift focus to other eye-related projects, the company said.
Google smart contact lens to measure glucose levels in tears.
Source: Google
Google smart contact lens to measure glucose levels in tears.
Verily, Alphabet's life sciences arm, has paused work on its so-called "smart lens" program, which was aiming to put tiny sensors on contact lenses to measure blood sugar levels in tears.
If it worked, the lenses could help diabetics track their glucose levels in real time and in less invasive ways than the traditional meters that require piercing the skin. But in a blog post on Friday, Verily said that after four years of research it has determined that detecting blood sugar in tears is a massive — and potentially insurmountable — technical and scientific undertaking.
"Our clinical work on the glucose-sensing lens demonstrated that there was insufficient consistency in our measurements of the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose concentrations to support the requirements of a medical device," the company said.
Verily made a big splash when if first launched the program in 2014, while it was still known as Google Life Sciences. The company partnered with Alcon, Novartis' eye-care division, on the project. However, it's been quiet about the project in the past few years, leading to speculation that it was winding down.
Verily said it did have some success with the experiment in a controlled environment, but not in actual tests because of the dynamic environment of the eye. It's a problem that goes beyond Verily.
