How can one monitor one’s own blood glucose level without great effort and without interpretational difficulties in the evaluation? This is the question that many researchers worldwide are asking themselves in view of the sharp increase in patients with diabetes mellitus. Google now informs about a new concept that is supposed to work by measuring blood glucose in the tear fluid.
Maintaining good and sustained blood glucose control is not always easy and difficult to reconcile with everyday habits. For years, research has been conducted to improve measurement via various body fluids, sometimes including tear fluid.
Now, scientists from the Google X research lab are working on a prototype contact lens (“Smart Contact Lens”) that has a glucose sensor and a wireless chip embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. With this, the lens measures the sugar content in the tear fluid and provides values once per second, which can possibly be used as an early warning system for the lens wearer. If they are too high or too low, an integrated LED light could light up, for example, according to Google. Wireless transmission of the measured values to mobile applications or similar communication channels is also conceivable. However, this technology is still in its infancy and practical use is a long way off.
Source: Media release Google blog, January 17, 2014.
HAUSARZT PRAXIS 2014; 9(2): 6
CARDIOVASC 2014; 13(1): 23
