We wrote a few months ago about a Google-developed contact lens that could analyze tears to determine glucose levels in diabetes sufferers. Novartis’s Alcon division says today that it’s reached a deal to license the technology and build them.
Under the agreement, Google will develop the electronics, which will do the chemistry and send the information to a smart phone. Novartis will make the lenses themselves, which will also be able to correct farsightedness. No word about more elaborate toric or bifocal lenses, but that’s probably getting ahead of ourselves. In passing, Novartis also suggests that the technology could be implanted in the eye itself as part of cataract treatment.
Novartis doesn’t say, but this will clearly require regulatory approval (in the US, of course, that’s the FDA). No date for an actual product was mentioned, either.