Purdue develops way to make contact lenses smarter

WEST LAFAYETTE — A Purdue University research team has developed a method to pair commercially available soft contact lenses with biocompatible sensors, effectively launching plans for a device that could help doctors better manage ocular disease and monitor other biological changes in their patients.

Chi Hwan Lee, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering at Purdue, is head researcher on the project, funded by the Purdue Research Foundation.

It’s not the first time developers have played with the idea. Novartis, an international health care company, partnered with Google in 2014 to build a “smart lens” prototype, which functions in many of the same ways as the technology proposed by Lee’s team.

But what bioengineering professionals currently know as the smart lens has major obstacles for consumers, Lee said.

One, it’s expensive, and, two — because the product is made from a thicker, plastic base — comfort and the length of time a user can wear the lens are limited.

Lee found in his experiments that hydrogel lenses like Acuvue can instead merge with thin sensor technology, a more comfortable, user-friendly alternative.

Like the base soft contact lens, Lee’s version of the smart lens can be worn up to 30 days and can be cleaned with normal contact solution.

His product uses a thin, flexible strip of gold to conduct trace amounts of electricity embedded in the semi-transparent lens. A separate silicone membrane measures changes in the eye and other elements with which it is biocompatible.

“Before our discovery, it was challenging to fabricate high-performance electronics on commercially available soft contact lenses,” Lee said in a written statement.

The sensor on the Purdue team’s lens can read temperature distribution on the surface of the eye, which could help optometrists and other medical professionals detect abnormalities or symptoms from eye-related disease.

In the long term, Lee hopes to perfect the sensor to read other chemical changes in the body through the eye, such as a change in glucose levels.

At some point — though this will take many more trials and experimentation, Lee said — the lenses could be used for recreational or educational purposes by pairing them with augmented-reality technology, which can superimpose virtual images on the eye so they appear in a “real” space. Other potential uses include on-demand night vision or administering medicine via the lens.

His team recently secured a patent on the technology, with the help of Purdue’s Office of Technology and Commercialization.

The next step, Lee said, is to receive approval to test the technology on animals, which could take six months to a year.

What is certain, he said, is that his team will partner with the Indiana University School of Medicine to test the technology on white rabbits, which have eyes comparable to those of humans.

If the contact lenses receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval and are commercialized, Lee hopes consumers can access the technology affordably. But that will largely depend on how insurance companies view it, he said.

“I hope these can be used in a very cost-effective way. That’s been a big motivation of my research,” Lee said in a phone call. “The smart contact lens is not new by any means, as companies like Google already have prototypes. … But the soft lens we’re using is

ready for market.”