We’re now testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose levels 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’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies which are helping to refine our prototype. We hope this could someday lead to a new way for people with diabetes to manage their disease.
I have no idea if these kinds of wearable technology – like Glass, and now this – are the future or not, but if they are, then Google is clearly quite, quite ahead of the curve.
As someone who was recently diagnosed with adult onset diabetes, I’d love to try out technology like this. If they can put it in prescription disposable lenses for not much more than regular disposables cost, it would be a boon to those suffering from bad eyes and diabetes. Given the two disorders go hand in hand, it’s a great way to kill two birds with one stone.
One step closer to a Futurama future.
Shut up and take my money!
Hmm… I don’t know if we have any more left, but as a person of an ethnicity who knows about technology, I’ll see what I can do.
This is an ex-Microsoft employee continuing the very same idea incubated at Microsoft three years ago.
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/mobile/video.aspx?id=150832
Google isn’t ahead of the curve, they acquihired the idea from Microsoft.
…and the University of Washington, according to the video you link.
I guess the key difference is that Microsoft patents and then discards much of technology they create (Singularity comes to mind), whereas Google seems much more willing to bring leading edge ideas to market – Glass, self-driving cars, digitizing out of print books, loon, etc.
I don’t blame the researcher for switching to Google. At least there, his idea will get a fair shot at changing the world for the better.
Plenty of things from MSR have seen the light of day. Generics in C#, NT kernel on WP8, a lot of Singularity’s ABI carried over to other research projects like Drawbridge, there’s Kinect stuff for v2, and even Singularity’s manifest design carried over to Windows 8’s AppManifest based capability system.
That’s off the top of my head, there are probably a lot more just a search away.
I think Google has a spotty record being able to commercialize its research and Glass isn’t anything that’s shipping to general consumers yet, same with these lenses so the distinction is one completely imagined on your part.
but carry on, there’s an amusing inability to credit Microsoft with anything on this website. Patents, monopoly, yada yada yada.
… and the University of Washington. You keep forgetting to give them credit for their part in this idea. The irony is palpable.
Your list is interesting, though, consisting almost entirely of pre-existing tech Microsoft added to their own products (surely you don’t think Microsoft invented generics, do you???) or new tech that they carried over into yet another research project (an interesting definition of “seeing the light of day”).
Kinect was excellent, though, as was Surface (the table, not the tablet). They do occasionally bring interesting new ideas to market.
But Google brings new ideas to market so often it’s almost routine, so again, the researcher made the right move in jumping to Google. Much, much better chance of changing the world.
Right, and there are many ways to skin the Generic cat. There are compile time transform, type erasures, reiffication, etc. MSR just applied the paradigm to the CLR, something they were uniquely suited to do given the magnitude of the effort required.
furthermore I fail to see why I should even be explaining this, the question was whether or not MSR projects are ever commercialized, and the answer is yes. A prerequisite isn’t that they’re totally original ideas, as RESEARCH often builds upon prior concepts. But I’m sure Google TOTALLY pioneered all of the tech in Glass.
re: Giving the University credit, are you forgetting that I linked the article? That you only even know they’re in the picture because of me?
and stop going off on a tangent about why he might have left (speculation on your part, btw), I don’t really care why and it was never in my original comment.
I said:
Nelson claimed:
Don’t look now, Nelson, but your pants are smoking ominously.
And to think I upvoted your original comment before replying. Silly me.
You’re right, in my follow up I should’ve written “most”, but the spirit of the response was still that there is no requirement that the ideas be completely original for them to count, as a counter point to you downplaying generic support being added to the CLR.
The Kinect was licensed anyway from PrimeSense, which was recently bought by Apple for a completely unknown reason.
That was Kinect v1. v2 is different tech altogether.
All of that jazz, and you forgot the best thing MSR has done: F#. A pox on your house for not mentioning it.
Haha, I both didn’t know and am not a huge fan of F#. The latest language in actually pretty fond of is Rust.
BTW for anyone interested, here’s a longer list of MSR projects seeing the light of day, sorted by year.
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/mobile/showpage.aspx?page=/en-us…
Why I should put this on my eye ?
Why I don’t put a similar thing below my skin ?
If you need contacts anyway, it covers 2 needs with 1 device. It’s easy to monitor and replace. It cues you directly.
A subcutaneous device could perform the same function, but would require (say) a smartphone for the display, and replacing it would require an office visit to your doctor. But your suggestion is a viable candidate, and such a device has been submitted to (but not yet approved by) the FDA, at least according to comments to the linked article.
Invasive surgery is both expensive and a stressful experience. Shoving a contact lense in, not so much
Google seems to be ahead of the curve on several technologies (car, glasses, this and more) because contrary to most companies, Google likes to share information concerning what they are doing in their labs and because Google is a company the press likes to talk about.
I would however bet that one would be quite amazed to see what some other companies have in their lab but want to keep secret until an actual product is ready to ship (IBM is an obvious example).
Show me any consumer device, let alone a successful one, that IBM have brought to market in the last 10 years. They’ve found a niche in servers and supercomputers, and that’s where it’ll stay.
I like how people characterize servers as “niche”. The whole cloud thing, which IBM also invented way back in the VM days is hardly a niche.
IBM’s detour into consumer technology was brief and nearly fatal. But they survived, and continue to generate incredible (and incredibly consistent) profits decade after decade as a business-focused hardware, software, and services corporation.
There’s much more to life than consumer tech.
A brief but excellent history can be found at http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/20/3-secrets-to-succe… if you’d like to know more.
I’m not convinced replacing a prick on the finger with a poke in the eye is an improvement
OK, so I’m one of those people doomed to wearing glasses because I couldn’t cope with shoving pieces of plastic into my eyes and clearly I’m in a minority.
I don’t understand why you’re being downvoted; you raise a valid point. I know quite a few people who wear glasses instead of contacts because they are uncomfortable with the thought of something touching their eye.
Still, I think even diabetics with good eyesight will welcome a less painful way to monitor blood glucose levels. I know I hate the fact that I’m pricking my finger all day long; given my work environment it’s becoming more and more of a nuisance, and on busy days I tend to forget to check when I should. I’m sure it’s the same for most diabetics.
I was introduced to contacts at a very early age, and I started with rigid gas permeable lenses, which some consider the most uncomfortable of all. So, I’m eagerly awaiting the day I can pop some augmented lenses into my eyes.
I have never heard of diabetics that have to check their glucose levels multiple times a day. Diabetics that I know don’t even do it once a month consistently. In fact you are only supposed to do it on an empty stomach after you’ve woken up in the morning (fasting blood sugar). I think they are exaggerating the effects of the disease. It does not make you a slave to blood glucose meters.
Tell that to both of my doctors. I’m on a combination medication that can send my glucose levels dangerously low, so I have to check it several times a day to keep an eye on it. I’m also logging and charting the glucose levels throughout the day and comparing that to a chart of my meals. That way my doctors can see not only how the medication affects my levels, but how my diet does too. The goal is to get me off the medication by adjusting my diet and exercise levels to compensate for my body’s lowered ability to produce insulin.
Interestingly, one doctor (my GP) feels that I’ll be on medication the rest of my life, and his goal is to get that burden lowered to as little medication as possible. My other doctor, a diabetes specialist, has said he wants me off the medication for good, and wants me to lose weight and build muscle to help support that goal. The two are best friends going back to medical school and this is one of the few things they disagree on. Personally, I’m siding with the diabetes specialist.
I’m so glad to hear that there are doctors out there who won’t buy into the big pharma marketing. Very few (if any) type II diabetics need to be dependent on medication.
Diabetes has become a multi billion dollar industry and it saddens me that google wants in on that too.
There is very little money invested in preventing diabetes even though it’s such an easy disease to avoid.