A Stylish Approach to Non-Invasive Glucose Testing

legolas writes "ABC News has a story on a new blood sugar monitoring tool being developed for diabetics by the University of Pittsburgh. Using special "photonic crystals" (materials that change colours in the presence of specific chemicals), Dr. Asher's group is developing contact lenses that change colour in response to the blood sugar level in the diabetic's tears. Instead of needles, the diabetic need only a mirror." Maybe the insulin can be stored there too.

Comments

Wow... the future of contact lenses!

[SocialWorm]

I look forward to the day when contacts act as a heads-up display. They just keep on getting more and more high-tech, so that seems like the most obvious end result. Just today, I found out that Cibavision is marketing contact lenses to improve tennis performance.

Re:Needles?

[devphil]

And it doesn't hurt. There's no pain involved in testing your blood sugar, other than the fact that it's a pain in the ass to have to do it all the time.

It hurts like a sonuvabitch.

Actually, it's not the pinprick that hurts. It's the little scabs/scars on the fingertips that kill me later, when I'm typing. (Yet another bonus to being diabetic: minor flesh wounds take longer to heal.) As I code and sysadmin[*] for a living, little flashes of pain with every keystroke are a major downside.

As soon as the hold-a-laser-sensor-to-your-skin glucose meters drop within my price range, I'm there. The contact lenses would be cool too ("he's unconscious and his eyes are turning purple, what the fuck does that mean?"), but I've never liked wearing contacts.

[*] Please don't tell my mother I'm a sysadmin; she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.