The statistics are staggering, The International Diabetes Federation estimates that at least 382 million people worldwide are living with diabetes right now, and unfortunately, that number is likely to increase to around 592 million sometime in the next 20 years. Thats a lot of blood sugar monitoring, which involves painful and time consuming finger sticks…
Now GoogleX developers (think driverless cars and Google Glass) just announced on January 16, 2014, a new product with the goal of allowing diabetics to continually check their glucose levels using a novel, non-intrusive method, the Google Contact Lens.
The contact lens uses a tiny processing chip and a specialized glucose sensor, in conjunction with an antenna that is actually thinner than a human hair. When this contact is worn, the sensor detects glucose levels in the wearer’s tears, taking readings once per second, with the transmitter sending these readings to an external device. Imagine, constant feedback on your glucose levels, no pokes required.
We have reported on the ability to monitor sugar levels with tears, but this GoogleX technology takes the idea to a whole new level. Google reports that they’re in discussions with the FDA, but that there’s still a lot of work to be done before they can turn this technology into a system that people can use. Early estimates seem to suggest it could be as long as 10 years, but I wonder if the sheer power of Google might muscle things along a bit faster than that. We can hope, can’t we?
[ GoogleX – Now Keeping a Watchful EYE on your Glucose Levels copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
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