Google has been on a spending spree this week. First they purchased Nest, a company that makes smart thermostats for an incredible $3 billion (you may have to have a Google+ page in order to heat your home now, joy!), and today the big G revealed that the company is now developing and testing smart contact lenses.
Before you dream of Netflix being beamed directly into your pupils, the technology has been developed for a slightly more worthy cause – to help millions of people affected by type 1 diabetes.
‘Wearable technology’ is set to be a huge buzzword in 2014, and the first ‘smart contact lens’ is an extremely intelligent piece of kit that will be able to measure glucose levels in the tears of the wearer. If glucose levels are irregular, they will trigger off tiny LED lights in the lens to indicate that action needs to be taken.
The lenses will erase the need for current inconvenient (and painful!) glucose checkers, which involve taking a sample of blood at regular times.
Smart contact lenses are the latest project to come out of “Google X”, the mysterious research lab that has previously announced products such as driverless cars and ‘internet balloons’ developed to help rural areas get connected.
The lenses are in the early stages yet, but this could be some world changing research by Google, and puts them way ahead in the ‘wearable technology’ market, which is predicted to expand by $50 billion in five years.
Good work, Google.
