Ah dreams vs. reality!
Google ends project to make blood testing contact lenses
Matthew Field
17 NOVEMBER 2018
Google parent company Alphabet has pulled the plug on a project to make contact lenses that can detect blood sugar levels in tears as the technological challenges proved too difficult.
The tech giant’s health division, Verily, had been working on making a contact lens that could easily monitor blood sugar levels for hundreds of millions of diabetes sufferers.
Many people with diabetes have to take regular blood tests to monitor their blood sugar levels. The smart contact lens would have made this process easier to monitor.
But Verily said that the project, which started in 2014, provided unforeseen technical challenges. Monitoring blood levels in tears proved too inaccurate.
Verilfy chief technical officer Brian Otis said: “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 project had some success in lab tests, but real world readings were harder due to the interactions of molecules in the eye.
Verily said that the project had demonstrated other uses for smart contact lenses. The lenses could be used for transmitting and sensing other data and could be used for building smart lenses to tackle farsightedness and for improving eyesight in cataracts surgery patients.
Other tech companies have moved to launch their own healthcare initiatives, with Apple adding heart-monitoring features to the Apple Watch.
Google has also been reorganising its health unit, incorporating UK start-up DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company, into Google Health.
