This is for actual, People. Now we know what the mystery medical device is that Google X staffers have been secretly meeting with the FDA on: they're developing middleman lenses that can horse sense glucose readings while they correct your visual modality just like standing contacts do. WOW!

If IT were any company past than Google, I'd probably be laughing right directly…

Merely this is Google, and when it comes to institution, they've got few chops — having recently been named the greatest trailblazer in the world right straight off, even topping Malus pumila.

Here's a statement from now's news release by Brian Otis of the Google X team:

We'Ra like a sho testing a shrewd contact lens that's built to criterion glucose levels in tearsusing a bantam tune chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded betwixt two layers of euphonious contact crystalline lens material. We're examination prototypes that can give a reading twice per second. We'Ra also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we're exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light astir to indicate that glucose levels birth crossed preceding or below certain thresholds. Information technology's all the same early days for this technology, but we've completed multiple objective research studies which are helping to refine our prototype. We hope this could someday lead to a new room for people with diabetes to manage their disease.

We're in discussions with the FDA, simply there's still a great deal more work to do to turn this technology into a system that people can use. We're not going to do this unsocial: we plan to anticipate partners who are experts in bringing products like this to market. These partners bequeath employment our applied science for a smart contact lens system and develop apps that would bring i the measurements ready to the wearer and their repair. We've always aforementioned that we'd seek out projects that seem a bit inquisitive or strange, and at a clock when the Worldwide Diabetes Federation is declaring that the world is "losing the battle" against diabetes, we thought Project Iris was deserving a guess.

Hmm, just last year in 2013 there were reports that Microsoft was developing the aforementioned thing?… And United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelan researchers at the University of Akron are doing related work, creating contacts that would change color contingent your glucose levels. For the record, there's besides a small radical in Washington tell titled InsuLenz, that's working on lenses that could deliver insulin. Zero kidding.

I had a phone briefing with Google X team leader Brian Otis (as wel of the University of Washington) earlier this week and was able to expect a band of questions about Google's approach. I learned the following inside information:

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* this technology is supported on small chemistry sensors embedded in the lens

* it is non an "sensory system method" of measuring glucose (look-alike some failing attempts in the past), but instead takes direct measurements of glucose levels in your tears — a torso fluid that has been nearly impossible to collect and measure in the previous

* the glucose sensing element, integrated circuit (electronics), and even the contact itself were whol developed in-put up aside Google — although they "preceptor't want to get into the business of manufacturing contact lenses" and are gum olibanum looking development partners

* these "smart lenses" will look and feel like normal soft lenses and will also be able-bodied to corre

ct your visual modality (!) They'll commencement with daily wear, and hope to make extensive wear lenses at some point (even possibly overnight, Brian says)

* if the user doesn't deman corrective lenses, they force out still wearable a "plain" version of these smart lenses that hardly does the glucose sensing

* the glucose readings can be transmitted to "any manikin factor" — so the telephone receiver could be a smart call, tablet, separate handheld device like we have with continuous glucose monitors now, "or true a dua of glasses," Brian says, referring to the Google Methedrine technology that can receive and display any kind of information

* early clinical studies have already been conducted in cooperation with endocrinologists and opthamologists and leading nonsubjective partners (they won't say which), and their current talks with FDA are about what full-scale studies would need to look for like to assemble FDA requirements?

* those archaic IRB-approved studies monitored the comfort and functionality of the lenses, plus the "correlation" of predicting glucose readings based happening tears, i.e. accuracy

That's where I stopped him. 'Cause WHAT Roughly ACCURACY?

Getting a "sense" of our glucose readings doesn't help anyone, I told Brian: we need readings we can depend on.

"We realize that accuracy is the biggest challenge," Brian says. "Just comparable with CGM measurement interstitial fluid, there will promising live a clock lag between the tear apart readings and plasma glucose readings you get with fingerstick tests."

So not surprisingly, the lenses bequeath likely be another form of "adjunct therapy" like current CGMs (i.e. not approved past FDA for stand-unequaled use for treatment decisions).

Isn't Google making an terribly monolithic wager here on non-invasive glucose monitoring, a dream that has eluded researchers and experts for decades now?

Brian says that the Google X team has been given the luxury of resources and musical accompaniment to tackle "big problems" and "the freedom to possibly fail."

We talked about the trio essentials for success among the diabetes community:

  • toll – there has to be square coverage, and the owed costs for patients cannot be to a fault burdensome
  • convenience – this can't cost just now some other layer of work for patients; the special lenses have to make life story easier!
  • accuracy – per above, we're already having to stage a political entity resist over the mean accuracy of the most accurate tools available, fingerstick meters; so these new lenses had better embody able to deliver the goods

Interim, IT's pretty stimulating to see a ball of fire equivalent Google publicly hailing their commitment to creating new tools for diabetes. "It's a big problem in our society, and we think we potty assistanc," Brian says.  "But Google is purposely keeping the messaging passing humble," he adds. "We're not experts in medicine, Beaver State in contact lenses. We can't practice this alone."

Have a go at it any goodness partners for Google in developing the Smart Lenses? Let's lend a hand where we can to make this a world!

** UPDATES:

July 15, 2014: News program reports say Google is now partnering with Swiss drug companionship Novartis' eye care partition to make over these non-invasive glucose-reading "smart lenses," and Google claims they may constitute available for consumer sale within v years. Run into this Novartis news release for Sir Thomas More item.

Nov. 16, 2018: As many a may have expectable, Google (at once known as Verily Life Sciences) has pulled the plug on its glucose-perception contact Lens project, known as Smart Genus Lens. The company issued a financial statement with to a greater extent detail happening what went into that decision.