Google has done incredibly well in the field of technology advancements.Their latest achievements being smart contact lenses to help checking diabetic levels.
There are approximately 382M people suffering from diabetis. Uncontrolled blood sugar sets individuals at danger for a range of dangerous medical complications, some short-term and others longer term, including impairment of the eyes, damage to kidneys and heart.
Insulin levels alter frequently with basic activities like exercising, eating or even sweating. Sudden increase or rash drops are risky and not unusual, and hence requires round-the-clock observing. Although some people wear monitors to check glucose levels with glucose sensor rooted under their skin. All people with diabetes must still prick their finger to get an accurate result.
Google recently revealed these lenses as their latest invention.its main aim is to keep the people with diabetes regularly updated about their blood sugar levels, so that they can control it routinely.
The lenses consist of miniature glucose sensor and a wireless transmitter. The sensor uses tear drops formed in the eyes of an individual to calculate the exact level of the insulin levels and the wireless transmitter displays the result.
Brian Otis who is the Google X project leader for the smart contact lens explained, “We’re testing a smart contact lens that we built that measures the glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and a miniaturized glucose sensor,”
The device also contains two shining glitter-specks that are loaded with tens of thousands of miniaturized transistors and is ringed with an antenna as thin as hair.
“We’ve had to work really hard to develop tiny, low-powered electronics that operate on low levels of energy and really small glucose sensors,” Otis remarked at the headquarters of the Google’s Silicon Valley, New York.
The developers ensures that the embedded microelectronics in the lens do not hinder vision because they are located outside the pupil and iris and not inside. Years of extensive soldering hair-thin wires to these minute electronics, fundamentally constructing small microchips from scratch, to make what Google alleged is the smallest wireless glucose sensor that was ever created.
These lenses have been developing since past 18 months in the Google X lab, the same lab who also came up with a driverless car, Google Glasses and Project Loon which consist a network of large balloons designed to beam the Internet to unwired locations.
Google assumes that this prototype will take minimum of five years to reach customers, and also this device stands in the line of several potential medical devices which are being designed by other corporations to make routine insulin checkup for patients with high risk of diabetics easier and less complicated than the old-fashioned blood-drawing finger pricks.
On the other hand, study on the contact lenses had been going on several years before at the University of Washington, where scientists have been working under National Science Foundation funding. Till Thursday, when Google revealed the project to press and media, their work had been kept kind of secret.
“We’re still really early on. We’re confident about how the technology is going so far. But there’s a huge amount of work left to do,” Otis told the media.
Google is now looking out for potential associates with experience with whom they can collaborate to launch similar products in market. Google officials haven’t given the exact figures with respect to how many people worked on the development of this lens, or how much capital the organization has invested on it.
