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Google Announces Smart Contact Lens Project For Diabetics

Posted by Soulskill on from the start-educating-your-contact-lenses-today dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google has announced on its official blog that it's working on a new way for diabetics to monitor their blood sugar: a 'smart' contact lens. Diabetes is a difficult condition to treat because blood sugar levels vary widely by a person's activity level and food intake. It's also hard to monitor without painful and intrusive measurements — people can feel normal at dangerously high blood sugar levels, while extremely low levels can impair their ability to seek treatment. Google says, 'Over the years, many scientists have investigated various body fluids—such as tears—in the hopes of finding an easier way for people to track their glucose levels. But as you can imagine, tears are hard to collect and study. At Google[x], we wondered if miniaturized electronics—think: chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair—might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy. We're now testing a smart contact lens that's built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. We're testing prototypes that can generate a reading once per second.' They're talking with the FDA and bringing in experts to help them figure out the best way to do it."

21 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Great by sidevans · · Score: 2

    Can they make my ex GF's eye's turn red before she goes crazy and attacks me, while having a low blood sugar experience?

    --
    I'm not signing anything
    1. Re:Great by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Insightful
      It's cute that you still buy the low blood sugar explanation,

      but what is the frequency required for crazy to be considered an active state?

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    2. Re:Great by wcrowe · · Score: 2

      Interesting. I'm diabetic and I've never heard of anyone behaving this way due to a low. Personally, I start shaking, I get weak, my heart starts pounding, and I break out in a sweat. The only thing I feel like attacking is a bag of gummy bears.

      --
      Proverbs 21:19
    3. Re:Great by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 3, Informative

      As a diabetic, if it sets on slowly then I find grumpyness to be a potential symptom. But there is a another consideration. OK I hate gummy bears, but to use your analogy. There is always one person I feel like attacking during a low. That is the person standing in between me and the gummy bears who won't get out of the way. Now add to that a simple preference of mine, and a predilection. When I do get a low odds are that it is a little before I sit down to eat. Given a choice, I would prefer to eat real food to treat a low rather then a "snack". So anyone who is in someway interfering with me preparing my meal, or sitting down to eat it, is gfoing to ghet there ass reamed.

    4. Re:Great by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 2

      Some folks do get belligerent, my father for one.

    5. Re:Great by CreatureComfort · · Score: 2

      As I diabetic, I can definitely say that low blood sugar makes me grumpy and irritable.

      4 out of 5 fights with my fiance, a nurse, end before they begin with her telling me to not say anything else until she gets me a glass of fruit juice.

      --
      "Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
      Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
    6. Re:Great by cheesybagel · · Score: 2

      The belligerence is usually when they have high glucose levels. When the glucose is low they usually look sedated.

  2. Where are they going? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yesterday google glass... today google contact lenses... tomorrow google supository...insert the whole internet right up your ass!

  3. Google Glass 2.0 by JayMarshallWolman · · Score: 2

    This looks like a development in the Google Glass project. It's a natural progression, much like people move from normal glasses to contact lenses, Google must be thinking of a way to turn Google Glass into a contact lens product. [It would raise major privacy issues if businesses could not identify who is wearing Google Contacts] Using a medical application sounds like an innocuous foray--a test of concept. That said, assuming no ulterior motive, it sounds like a worthy venture, especially if it improves upon current continuous glucose monitoring methods.

    1. Re:Google Glass 2.0 by barlevg · · Score: 2

      what? 1/r^2 isn't enough for you? Depending on how the LED was constructed, I could see your eye absorbing pretty much 100% of the photons it generated. How many photons hitting the retina is enough to blind you, given that the human eye is capable of observing single photon events? I believe that much of the eye's dynamic range is due to the iris, is it not? In which case, the light source would have to be dead-center over the iris or risk getting filtered out. Now, if there are LEDs that can produce single photons, then fine--I concede the point.

  4. Once more, technology helping health care by holiggan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is amazing news... I believe we might not be far from some sort of sensor that will monitor our main "health checks" (sugar level in blood, cholesterol, blood pressure, heart rate, etc) and give us an accurate, real time report, in a non-intrusive / painful way...

    --
    "A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
    1. Re:Once more, technology helping health care by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      This is amazing news... I believe we might not be far from some sort of sensor that will monitor our main "health checks" (sugar level in blood, cholesterol, blood pressure, heart rate, etc) and give us an accurate, real time report, in a non-intrusive / painful way...

      Something I'm sure insurance companies would love to know.

      Oh, you're mostly in the green, but for 10 days in 2013, I see you went into the yellow for your health. That'll be a 10% unhealthy habits surcharge on your premium. Next time, go easy on the sweets, especially around the holidays and your birthday.

  5. Re:I, for one, etc, etc by CreatureComfort · · Score: 2

    Version 3.0 will still be in Beta, then before they get to 4.0 they'll cancel the project leaving millions without a vital tool they've come to depend on.

    Excuses will be made that "Diabetics are only a small fraction of the total Google user base, so we just couldn't justify keeping those resources tied up on something we couldn't monetize with AdWords."

    --
    "Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
    Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
  6. Cool, and probably realistic, but... by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2

    This is a lot more realistic than the ever-repeating "display integrated into a contact lens" stories. Continuous, non-invasive monitoring of blood sugar will be an enormous boon, especially if it can be integrated with insulin-pump control.

    Having said that, though, wearing a contact lens actually is kind of invasive. I wore them happily for many years, but there were also periods where it wasn't a very happy experience. Contacts do increase certain risks to your eyes, and diabetics already face significant risks to their vision. (As far as I know, the cornea-related risks from contacts are independent of the retina-related risks from diabetes.) I can imagine many diabetics wouldn't be very enthusiastic about wearing a contact lens, especially if they don't need it for vision correction.

    1. Re:Cool, and probably realistic, but... by reebmmm · · Score: 2

      Diabetic here. I would wear the contact lens in a heartbeat. The idea is that this device would replace the finger pricks, otherwise known as holes in skin. And when you repeatedly test on your fingers (6-10/day), that's a lot of holes and a lot of blood. There is risk for infections, scabs and blisters. And long time diabetics develop callouses on their fingers from testing which means that they need to poke deeper to get blood.

      Plus the checking isn't really "constant." You have to periodically check during the day. That means that you can go high or go low between checks and perhaps not realize it until you have symptoms.

      There are constant glucose monitors. Essentially a large pager you carry around that is connected to the body via an injection site. They're great. They measure changes in BS very well, but they're very limited in duration, insertions are painful, and the disposable bits are really expensive. You also need the finger sticks because (as far as I'm aware) few are accurate enough to give you the same level of accuracy.

  7. Non-invasive glucose monitoring by Guppy · · Score: 2

    This would be an excellent development, bit keep in mind the field is littered with many dozens of failed devices and startup companies.

    Of the various http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noninvasive_glucose_monitor"> non-invasive glucose monitoring methods that have been tried, I am aware of only one that was approved in the US (a transcutaneous electroporation device), and that one was withdrawn from the market shortly after.

  8. Shouldn't they... by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 2

    Shouldn't they first determine if tears are an accurate way to measure glucose in the first place? That could be measured now, even if it would not be convenient. It would seem that if you are willing to wear a micro sensor in your eye, why not just inject it under the skin? If you did that, you could make it the size of an rfid tag.

  9. Oh, the irony . . . by Idou · · Score: 4, Funny

    The contact lens requires tears. The most effective generator of tears? Pinpricks . . . .

    --
    Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
  10. missing the point by rst123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think many of the comments are missing the point, Diabetes testing supplies are worth a lot of money every year. If, and that's a big if, Google can introduce a market altering device, (patented, I'm sure) they will largely own the market.

    1. Re:missing the point by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2

      I'm trying to figure out why this was even developed at Google, and then it came to me. (this is pure speculation, please don't get all pissed off...)

      Someone at the top of the Google food chain either has Diabetes, or has a loved one with Diabetes.

      Considering the prevalence of diabetes in the US, that seems like a remarkably safe bet.

      Maybe that did motivate someone at the top of Google. Or maybe they want to do some good in the world. Or maybe they want big bucks from health-care. Or all of the above.

  11. Original research by Slyder · · Score: 2

    Some of the original research in this area was carried out by Angelika Domschke (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/angelika-domschke/19/709/824). For example, this study happened back in 2006 - http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/dia.2006.8.89.

    Fun fact - Google tried to recruit her and she turned them down after meeting their team.