Smart contact lens halted

A glucose-sensing contact lens project has been shelved by Verily and Novartis following challenges in obtaining accurate readings from tear film.

The partnership began in 2014 when Verily, formerly part of Google, and Novartis’ eye-care division Alcon started the project to put sensors on a contact lens to measure glucose levels for people affected by diabetes.

In a blog post, Verily stated: ‘Our clinical work on the glucose-sensing lens demonstrated that there was insufficient consistency in our measurements of the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose concentrations to support the requirements of a medical device.

‘In part, this was associated with the challenges of obtaining reliable tear glucose readings in the complex on-eye environment.’