Alphabet Unit Halts Glucose-Detecting Contact Lens Project (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report from Reuters: Alphabet's life sciences division Verily said on Friday that it was putting on hold one of its oldest and highest-profile projects, a smart contact lens designed to help monitor sugar levels. The project, started in 2014, aimed to help diabetics better manage their blood sugar levels by embedding sensors on a contact lens to monitor the glucose levels in their tears. In a blog update, Verily cited here insufficient consistency in the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose concentrations to support the requirements of a medical device. On the bright side, Alphabet and Verily said they would continue to work on two other "Smart Lens" projects -- one for presbyopia (far-sightedness), and another to improve sight following cataract surgery.

Comments

presbyopia != far-sightedness (exactly)

[starless]

one for presbyopia (far-sightedness)

It's a bit over-simplyfying things to refer to presbyopia as far-sightedness.
Presbyopia is the loss, with age, of the ability to accommodate or change focus.
The net result may be the loss of ability to focus on nearby objects, but simple far-sightedness would be "hyperopia"

Alcohol Breathalyser, THC, and glucose.

[labnet]

We use to manufacture alcohol breathalysers.. the proper ones that used used platinum cell catalysation. Alcohol in the blood has a ratio to alcohol in the breath of 2300:1. This is why law enforcement in many countries can prosecute based on breath alcohol sample because of its well established ratio to what's in your blood.
So we were approached to do the same for 'weed' aka THC. There is a dye called Fast Blue B that changes colour in the presence of THC vapour. Well, to cut a very long and interesting story short, it turns out there is no real relation to THC in blood to breath because of the volatility difference of the molecules.
Glucose is another dastardly hard thing to measure without going directly to blood. The holy grail of reliable non invasive glucose monitoring for diabetics is still elusive, but good on Alphabet (such a dumb name) for trying.