New Delhi: As all know,diabetes affects the body’s ability to regulate a type of sugar called glucose. If blood sugar levels aren’t properly monitored, they can creep up and damage organs.
People with diabetes can monitor their sugar levels by pricking their finger and testing their blood with a glucose meter, but many find this painful and inconvenient.
Now, Jang-Ung Park at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea and his colleagues have developed a soft, flexible smart contact lens that will allow diabetics to monitor their blood sugar with the blink of an eye.
The lens is able to detect a patient’s glucose levels in their tears using built-in wireless sensors. Previous studies have shown that the sugar content of tears corresponds closely with blood sugar.
Now, this clear, flexible and unique contact lens contains a tiny light that lets people with diabetes know, if their sugar levels get too high or not.
However, the concept of a smart contact lens isn’t exactly new. Many emerging smart lens technologies employ lenses that are both expensive and extremely brittle. They can impair the wearer’s vision or even cause injury, and measuring signals from these lenses often requires bulky equipment.
But, the newly developed smart lens could change all of that. In a study published in Science Advances, this new developed smart contact lense's Project leader, told a news service SWNS that, "This strategy does not require the expensive tools or brittle components that currently used in many other 'smart' lenses, which can block the user's field of vision and even harm the eye."
According to UNIST, the biggest drawback with other smart contact lenses is wearability.
Therefore, the team developed a special sensor that uses electrodes made of highly stretchable and transparent materials that make the lens easier to wear. Through an embedded wireless antenna in the contact sensor, patients can transmit their health data, allowing real-time monitoring of their health.
Researchers explained the wireless display has an LED pixel that can detect changing glucose levels, while at the same time displaying the information.
"After detecting the glucose level in tear fluid above the threshold, this pixel will turn off - a cue to the wearer," they added.
A brief about how these lenses will works:
The team of researchers incorporated three main components into a flexible, transparent nanostructure to create these smart, soft lenses: glucose sensors, wireless power transfer circuits, and display pixels.
The pixels access sensing data in real-time, eliminating the need for external equipment to measure the glucose. The glucose information is displayed through the LED pixel. When the system detects that glucose levels have crossed a certain threshold, the LED pixel in the lens shuts off, alerting the wearer to the concerning level.
So far, the researchers have tested their smart contact lens in a rabbit’s eye, and they say they were able to successfully monitor the animal’s glucose levels wirelessly. They hope the lens could eventually be used to monitor glucose in humans.This could be incredibly useful for people with diabetes, and it could also be used to screen for pre-diabetes, giving patients the upper hand in preventing diabetes and keeping track of their health.
Also, they hope to use the method for pre-diabetes detection, and other health conditions.
Besides glucose levels, this type of technology could be extended to monitor other biomarkers, such as blood pressure, body temperature, or cholesterol. These could allow the wearer to work together with their physician to better prevent vascular disease, better understand their risk of stroke, and much more.
Therefore, if researchers were to be believed, this dramatic advance in smart contact lens technology could one day be a standard medical tool, allowing people to take their health into their own hands with comfortable, easy-to-use monitoring abilities.
The team behind this study is currently working with a hospital to start clinical trials, according to an emailed statement. But until we know more about how well this new contact lens works in humans, the quest for a needle-less glucose monitor continues.
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