Google looks ahead with development of smart contact lens

Brian Otis, the Google X project lead, holds a contact lens Google is testing in this January 2014 photo. Jeff Chiu / AP Photo

Google is teaming up with the Swiss drug maker Novartis to develop smart contact lenses with embedded electronics.

Novartis's Alcon unit will work with Google's secretive Google X division on lenses with non-invasive sensors, microchips and embedded miniaturised electronics to monitor insulin levels for people with diabetes, or to restore the eye's natural focus in people who can no longer read without glasses, Basel-based Novartis said yesterday.

“Some of our biggest healthcare issues that we will face over the next 10 years are going to be solved by bringing together high technology with biology,” said the Novartis chief executive Joe Jimenez. “More and more health issues will be addressed in a non-traditional approach like this.”

Novartis expects to get the first prototypes by early next year and may start marketing the products in about five years, said the Novartis chief executive Joe Jimenez. He identified eye care as one of three key divisions, along with branded and generic drugs, in announcing a US$28.5 billion restructuring of the company in April that involved selling off the vaccines and animal health units and buying GlaxoSmithKline’s cancer business.

“The promise here is the holy grail of vision care, to be able to replicate the natural functioning of the eye,” Mr Jimenez said. “Think about a contact lens that could help the eye autofocus on that newspaper and then when you look up it would autofocus in the distance.”

Mr Jimenez said Novartis will be responsible for the marketing and commercialisation of the products, and that both companies will benefit financially, without being more specific. Novartis will commit “a significant effort” to developing the lenses to accelerate their development, he said.

Mr Jimenez said Novartis had tried for years to develop a lens that would replicate the function of the eye, and held talks with Google X’s Andrew Conrad in Basel shortly after the California-based company said in January that it was developing smart contact lenses.

That announcement came after Bloomberg News reported that Google had met officials at the US food and drug administration who oversee medical devices.

Mr Conrad joined Google X last year. He is a former chief scientist at Laboratory Corp of America and co-founder of its National Genetics Institute.

“Our dream is to use the latest technology in the miniaturisation of electronics to help the quality of life for millions of people,” said Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google.

Terms of yesterday’s deal were not disclosed.

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