A research project involving cooperation between British, American and Chinese scientists has developed a contact lens that monitors for the tell-tale signs of stroke or diabetes risk while performing its traditional role of correcting the wearer’s sight. The lens can even alert the wearer to the risk of heart disease by measuring chemicals found in tear fluid.
The monitoring of slight changes to the wearer’s biochemistry that can provide an early warning of potential health risks is achieved by an electronic mesh added to the lenses. The mesh contains light, temperature and glucose detectors and is mounted onto the surface of the lens, in direct contact with tear fluid.
The researchers who worked on the project are hopeful it could help doctors and other medical specialists better tackle medical emergencies by detecting their development before it’s too late. Dr Yunlong Zhao of the University of Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute commented for The Times newspaper:
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on the entire scientific community, with many of us asking how our work could help those suffering from similar future medical emergencies”.
“We are confident that devices that utilise our sensor layer system could be used as a non-invasive way to help monitor and diagnose people’s health.”
The project involved cooperation between scientists at London’s National Physical Laboratory, the USA’s Harvard University and George Washington University and China’s University of Science and Technology. Findings were recently published in Matter, the scientific journal.
Smart contact lenses have been developed in the past, but Harvard researcher Dr Shiqi Guo believes the project’s technology represents a step forward on previous efforts. He explains:
“Our ultra-thin sensor layer is different from the conventional smart contact lenses with their rigid or bulk sensors and circuit chips that are sandwiched between two contact lens layers and make contact with tear fluids via microfluidic sensing channels”.
“This new layer could instead be mounted on to a contact lens and maintain direct contact with tears, thanks to its easy assembly, high-detection sensitivity, good biocompatibility and mechanical robustness. Further, it doesn’t interfere with either blinking or vision.”
While the team of academics’ focus has been developing smart contact lenses for health purposes, others are working on alternative technology to develop lenses incorporating displays. Californian start-up Mojo Vision has spent over $100 million developing a contact lens incorporating an LED display and processor from Arm, the British chip designer. Mojo claims their LED display is, with 300 pixels in half a millimetre, the world’s smallest.
They’ve even managed to include a thin-film battery and antenna for wireless communication inside the lens, which sits directly in the eye like a normal contact lens. The lens connects to a smartphone which streams content to the display. Pretty much like streaming a YouTube video on a phone to a smart TV, only the monitor is in the lens, directly in front of the eye.
Mojo head of product Steve Sinclair comments:
“We have to build something that shows you information that doesn’t distract you, helps you, goes away when you don’t need it and stays off when you don’t want it.”