Google halts its Contact Lenses Project

Diabetics may have to wait longer, as one of the projects based on the development of glucose –sensing contact lenses have been put on hold by Alphabet (Google’s parent company). The step was taken by the company, after clinical trial results turned out to be unsatisfactory.

In 2014, Verily, Google’s health tech unit collaborated with Alcon, eye care division of Novartis to carry out the project. The project aimed to convert contact lenses into an innovative medical device that could monitor blood glucose levels by detecting glucose levels in tears.

The clinical team witnessed a lack of consistency in in the measurements of the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose concentrations. Possibly, it did not support a medical device’s requirements to carry out the trail. The second problem of the clinical trial was that, the interference from biomolecules found it difficult to measure the glucose readings in the tear film, even though the quantity of glucose was very less.

Alcon will continue to work on two contact lenses, i.e. a smart intraocular lens for improving sight following cataract surgery and a smart accommodating contact lens for presbyopia.

There are many other companies other than Google which has rolled out many healthcare initiatives. Earlier, Apple introduced a heart-monitoring feature in the Apple Watch.