InWith to challenge soft type smart contact, development status announced at CES 2021

Pickup: INWITH PREMIERS THE FUTURE OF ELECTRONIC CONTACT LENSES AT CES 2021

At CES2021, the progress of the extended soft contact lenses currently under development by InWith has been published. Part of the roadmap under development shows how the stretchable circuit embedded in the squishy and variable soft contact lenses is well established.

The purpose of smart contact lenses is to (1) make it easier to acquire vital information such as blood glucose levels (2) provide xR vision and expand information in the real world. The xR vision also aims not only to expand information but also to digitally support the deterioration of eyesight such as presbyopia. By the way, the development research of (1) is Google's smart contact lens development, which attracted a lot of attention in 2014.

In particular, the expansion of the vision, which corresponds to (2), requires a display, so a hard contact lens (especially a strong corneal lens that covers the white of the eye) was required for development. For example, Mojo Vision, which is advancing in this field, has announced joint development with Menicon, which is strong in the development of strong corneal lenses in Japan.

On the other hand, hard contact lenses in the market are being pushed by soft contact lenses because of their fragility and ease of use. The InWith announcement is noteworthy in that it covers this soft contact market.

It's not that stretchable circuits haven't existed before, but it seems that the reason they didn't exist was that there was no way to connect components and circuits to contact lens materials. InWith claims to have obtained a breakthrough that integrates into the hydrogel material, which is the material for soft contact lenses, by expanding and contracting the material during the normal manufacturing process.

Bausch & Lomb, a major manufacturer of soft contact lenses, supported the process. It would be wise to make the decision to share the manufacturing process of contact lenses, which are already worn by millions of people, with a team of only five InWith teams. It will not come true unless the asset publishing layer is clear. Other technical patents include the following.

I think it is still in the very early stages of a long development roadmap for practical use, but there may be a possibility that the range of smart contact lens options will expand beyond this technology.

Editing and co-writing: Samurai Hirano

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