HealthWatch: Future Contact Lenses May Diagnose, Treat Disease

BERKELEY (CBS 5) -- Around 40 million Americans wear contact lenses. But in the not-so-distant future, contacts may do much more than help you see.

25-year-old Matt Davis is getting a routine eye exam at the Meredith Morgan Eye Center at UC Berkeley. The Cal graduate student wears contacts.

"I mean they are just more convenient than glasses," said Davis. "They correct my vision, with these I can see perfectly."

But what if a contact lens did more than bring the outside world into focus? A new generation of lenses could soon diagnose, monitor and even treat disease of the person wearing the lens.

They are called "smart lenses." Packed with circuits, sensors and wireless technology, the lenses are designed to keep an eye on health.

Professor Babak Parviz is one of the pioneers in this field. "There's a possibility to develop a really, really important new tool for medicine," Parviz said.

Parviz and his team at the University of Washington built the lens, which they are now testing. They believe one day it could replace, and vastly improve upon, the standard blood test.

"It allows for a very noninvasive, continuous monitoring of the human body," said the electrical engineer and nanotechnologist.

Parviz said biomarkers found in the blood, such as cholesterol, sodium, potassium and glucose, can also be found on the surface of the eye. In the Parviz lab, a lens was able to monitor glucose, and transmit the result.

"Some day, maybe, you can read the result with your cell phone," Parviz predicted.

If the science pans out, diabetics could keep continuous tabs on their blood sugar without ever having to prick a finger.

That would please Kim Carter. "I hate it. It hurts," she exclaimed. Carter has type 1 diabetes and pricks her finger five to seven times a day.

With a smart lens, her blood sugar could be monitored painlessly and automatically, 24/7.

"I would definitely try it out if it became available on the market," said Carter.

But that will take years. The Parviz lens has not been tested on humans.

However, another smart lens has. It's called Triggerfish and it's already on the market in Europe and Latin America. The lens is currently being tested in clinical trials at UC San Diego.

"I think it's great," said Dr. Clifford Lee, a San Francisco optometrist at Invision Optometry.

Triggerfish is designed to help patients with glaucoma, the second leading cause of blindness.

With glaucoma, abnormal eye pressure builds up in the eye, damaging the optic nerve and leading to permanent vision loss, even blindness. There are no symptoms when the damage is occurring.

Lee said to properly diagnose and adequately treat glaucoma, a doctor needs to measure and monitor a patient's eye pressure over the course of a day. Triggerfish does that, and more.

"It will download its information wirelessly to a device and we can perhaps see what or how the eye has changed over the course of time," Lee said.

In addition to monitoring disease, how about treating it as well? There's a smart lens under development that can do just that.

"This lens has the ability to release medication to the eye for a long period of time." said Dr. Joe Ciolino at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Harvard researchers Ciolino and Dr. Daniel Kohane were part of the team that built the device that is now being tested. Built into the lens is a light brown donut shaped chamber that contains the drug.

"This object would be placed in the eye and would slowly leak out over time," said Kohane, who is with Children's Hospital Boston.

But perhaps the most amazing idea for a smart lens is the one also under development at the Parviz lab. Tiny LED's built into the lens overlay images into your field of vision. The idea: that one day, you'll be able to stream health data, the internet, even television right in front of your eyes.

And while this augmented reality lens is years away, Matt Davis wants one. "You could be reading your emails when walking down the street, things like that. I'd be interested in it actually," said Davis.

Just watch where you walk.

(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)