Google announced
on the 16th of January that it was going to embark on a project that would help
diabetics monitor their blood sugar level whenever it is too low or too high.
Managing diabetes is a hard task for diabetics and a technology is needed to
make detection of sugar levels in the blood easier.
“At Google[x],
we wondered if miniaturized electronics – think: chips and sensors so small
they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair – might
be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater
accuracy.” the blog post read.
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| Image: Google |
Google has
decided to make a contact lens that would be able to track a patient’s blood
sugar level and indicate if it is too low or too high.
“We’re now
testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose level in tears
using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded
between two layers of soft contact lens material. We’re testing prototypes that
can generate a reading once per second.
“We’re also
investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the
wearer, so we’re exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to
indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds.”
it read.
Statistics
revealed that 372 million people were infected with Diabetes as at the end of
2013 and the number is set to increase to 592 million by 2035.
Of the number
of people with diabetes, 175 million are undiagnosed and 5.1 million people
died in 2013 as a result of diabetes. This is still in the testing stage but it
is no doubt a step in the right direction.
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Google announces a project that could help 372 million people