Researchers have developed a soft contact lens which mines tears to detect glucose levels of the wearer
Orange County, CA - May 3rd 2017 - Researchers at the University of Houston have developed a soft contact lens which mines tears to detect glucose levels of the wearer. Standard analysis of glucose levels is done by testing blood acquired by pricking a finger, however this new technology offers noninvasive and painless obtaining of samples.
According to Wei-Chuan Shih, a researcher with the University of Houston who worked to develop this project with colleagues in UH and in Korea, this technology has no precedent. “There’s no noninvasive method to do this,” says Shih. “It always requires a blood draw. This is unfortunately the state of the art.”The contact lens project is an alternative approach in contrast to Ramen spectroscopy-based noninvasive skin sensors. Ramen scattering, a process named in 1982 after Indian physicist C.V. Ramen, deciphers the molecular properties of a material through its interaction with light. Shih currently holds two patents on a similar device he developed as a student at MIT that directly probes skin tissue to gage glucose levels and other necessary information.
Basal tears are full of minerals such as sodium, potassium, and glucose and contain a plethora of information about the human body. For that reason, tears were chosen as the quantifiable variable; as a result the contact lens was the chosen vehicle. The biggest test in the project was to ensure there was a detector capable of mining tears and to confirm that the detector could provide authentic diagnostics.
Contact lenses have a versatile future. Google has even submitted patents for multi-sensing contact lenses, stating that this technology could be implemented into a number of other applications. This project is a testament to the possibility of multi-sensor technology. “It’s one of the grand challenges to be solved. It’s a needle in a haystack challenge,” says Shih.