News roundup: CVS cashing out notes, catching up with ISfTeH, India’s Stasis Labs RPM enters US, Propeller inhaler with Novartis Japan, Cerner gets going with VA

August 27, 2020 | by

CVS Health is pricing out a tender offer for some notes. If you are holding one of a potpourri of notes with due dates of 2023 and 2025 from CVS, the company is making a cash tender offer, meaning they are cashing these notes out. This is usually done as part of rearranging financing, especially appropriate in the wake of the Aetna acquisition. The details are here in their release of 12 August. The collective value for both note years is approximately $3 bn each. An update is here on Seeking Alpha.

We have been remiss in not maintaining our following the Swiss-based International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH) so we will direct your attention to their August update which features the effect of COVID on teledermatology, women’s health, teleurology, and news on members and developers. Their Journal, still edited by Professor Maurice Mars of South Africa, has published once this year in January.

India’s Stasis Labs, developer of a remote patient monitoring (RPM) platform utilizing a smartphone, vital signs devices, a bedside monitor connected into a platform, is entering the US market. It monitors six vital signs in a single monitor: heart rate, blood oxygen, electrocardiogram, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and temperature. Awarded a 510(k) clearance in April, Stasis, out of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator program, has had a limited deployment at Texas-based emergency-care provider Hospitality Health ER and California-based Glendale Surgical Center and Orthopedic Surgery Specialists. It has also deployed to 50 cities in India. Mobihealthnews

Smartphone-connected inhaler sensor company Propeller Health has inked a deal with Novartis in Japan. Patients prescribed Novartis’ drugs for uncontrolled asthma, the Enerzair or Atectura Breezhaler, can now enroll in Propeller’s digital-management program. Data about their inhaler use will be transmitted from the sensor on the inhaler to Propeller’s smartphone app. The app also pings users with reminders and usage data. Propeller was acquired last year for a stunning $225 million by ResMed. Propeller this past May gained 510(k) FDA clearance for a sensor/app for use with AstraZeneca’s Symbicort inhaler.

Cerner’s EHR implementation with the US Department of Veterans Affairs finally took a step forward after many delays with the launch last Friday of a new scheduling system at the VA Central Ohio Healthcare System in Columbus, Ohio. Cerner migrated the information of some 60,000 veterans in preparation. The full EHR at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, originally scheduled for March, will go live this fall. Healthcare Dive

News Roundup of acquisitions, funding: Health Catalyst-Vitalware, Change Healthcare-Nucleus.io, Medtronic-Companion Medical, Cecelia Health; Proteus Health sale contested, but sold (updated 20 Aug)

August 19, 2020 | by

Spin that lasso, round up the dogies, because we’re going to the rodeo! Data and analytics company Health Catalyst is acquiring Vitalware, which provides ‘chargemaster’ revenue workflow optimization and analytics SaaS technology to healthcare organizations. The deal is expected to come in at about $120 million with a $30 million earnout, funded by stock and cash, and close later this year.  Health Catalyst is on a buying tear, having acquired Healthfinch, a prescription refill management and visit planning platform to close care gaps, for $40 million in cash and shares in July. Health Catalyst went public in July 2019 and is trading at a market cap of nearly $1.3 bn (Unicorn Status isn’t what it used to be!). They’ve also inked a partnership deal with Northwell Health, the largest provider in New York State, to expand Northwell’s enterprise data and analytics capabilities with EHR integration. Health Catalyst releases on Vitalware, Healthfinch, and Northwell Health. Also FierceHealthcare.

Updated. Another major 2019 IPO, Change Healthcare, is acquiring Nucleus.io, a  cloud-based imaging and workflow platform, from San Diego-based developer NucleusHealth. This is a significant move, fitting into their Enterprise Imaging area and accelerating their implementation of a complete cloud-based, end-to-end solution within their Enterprise Imaging Network. Nucleus.io serves over 7,500 organizations and will add to Change Healthcare’s imaging customer base. Change is acquiring the Nucleus.io technology and team. NucleusHealth will continue to operate under its own name; they also operate a teleradiology platform, StatRad. Terms were not disclosed. Release. HealthcareITNews (Updated to clarify that the Change Healthcare acquisition is the Nucleus.io technology and not NucleusHealth the company)

Medtronic, which insiders dub the 9,000 lb. elephant of medical devices and remote patient management, has been quiet of late, but that doesn’t mean the elephant isn’t moving and sitting where it wants to sit. Continuing to build in diabetes care, they have just acquired Companion Medical, developer and marketer of the InPen, a insulin pen with a companion app, which was FDA cleared in 2016 and remains the only ‘smart insulin pen’ system. Eli Lilly and K2 Health Ventures were Companion’s major funders. Closing is expected within two months. Terms were not disclosed. Medtronic is clearly constructing a closed-loop diabetes management system through acquisitions such as Companion as well as diet-management startups Klue and Nutrino.  Release, Mobihealthnews. 

And in diabetes management, Cecelia Health (the renamed Fit4D), scored a healthy $13 million in Series B funding. Rittenhouse Ventures and Endo Investors co-led the round, with participants Boston Millennia Partners, SustainVC, G100 Capital and others, for a total of $22.4 million in funding (Crunchbase). Fit4D developed clinical virtual coaching with certified diabetes educators, and partners with health plans, self-insured employers, medical device and pharma companies. The funding will go to developing a first-in-kind ‘Virtual Clinic’ for diabetes, which will offer continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) training, education on medication adherence and lifestyle and behavior change, mental health screening and counseling. These will be then supported by algorithms recommending necessary dosage and titration changes that will be reviewed and approved by Cecelia Health’s Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialists (CDCES) and endocrinologists.  Release, Mobihealthnews  A few days before the funding, Cecelia announced their participation with the Jaeb Center for Health Research Foundation in Tampa in their research to develop a virtual specialty clinic model, funded by a $5 million grant from the Helmsley Foundation. Release

Updated for Proteus sale. The troubled ‘smart pill’ pioneering company and one-time unicorn Proteus Digital Health, which filed for Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy on 16 June [TTA 17 June], planned to exit it with a $15 million ‘stalking horse’ deal with Otsuka Pharmaceuticals in advance of a bankruptcy auction. ‘Stalking horse’ deals set a floor at an auction and essentially set a minimum price. Investors, including Novartis and two Hong Kong funds, contested that fire sale earlier this week, claiming the sale to Otsuka was undervalued and if the IP and other assets were divided, a higher price would be obtained. One could understand their feelings, as Proteus raised nearly $500 million from them which essentially has vanished.

On Wednesday 19 August, the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware approved the sale to Otsuka, which was filed on Thursday. A key part of the hearings was Proteus’ investment banker, Raymond James & Associates, fruitlessly reaching out to over 240 potential buyers. What scared them off was Proteus’ burn rate–between $2 million and $2.5 million a month–with no clear prospect of positive cash flow or profitability (the latter quite elusive even in public companies). The purchase by Otsuka, which was deemed fair in the ruling with the opportunity for others to provide higher offers, covers information technology assets, intellectual property, and equipment, including equipment used to design and manufacture wearable sensors. Related court documents.

Otsuka was Proteus’ last major partnership for Abilify MyCite that ended suddenly in January. From the case documents schedule, this will be wrapped by end of September. FierceHealthcare 12 Aug, 27 July    STAT+ (paywalled) 20 Aug, HealthcareITNews

A selection of short digital health items of potential interest

February 8, 2019 | by

Editor Charles has taken time off recently from assessing mHealth apps to give us a selection of short news items and event notifications.

CE and FDA certification

This editor recently stumbled over the first list he’s ever seen of approved digital health medical devices. As of today there are some 151 products on there which is hugely impressive. One of the reasons for the relatively poor showing of CE certifications on the list is that there is no official list yet: latest forecasts for Eudamed, which will provide this, are Spring 2020 amid much uncertainty about whether enough Notified Bodies will be approved to certify to the MDR in time. Immediately spotted as a CE certification missing is Walk with Path’s Path Finder device for helping people with Parkinson’s to avoid a freezing of their gait (though CE certification is well hidden on their website) and doubtless there are others. Clearly the list points up potential benefits were it ever possible to harmonise the approval process across the Pond.

Longevity 

The first Longevity Leaders event took place on Monday, perhaps the first large event in the UK on that topic. Based on the enthusiasm of attendees, clearly it won’t be the last. Doubtless in due course it will fragment into a myriad of specialist topics though currently it is a fascinating combination of almost every medical/pharmaceutical and digital discipline, plus housing and a range of other considerations. Timescales varied widely too – for example I talked about the immediate benefits of digital health including keeping people in their own homes, thus minimising sarcopenia from being confined to a hospital bed and avoiding exacerbating dementia by a change of environment, whereas others spoke of how best to make DNA immortal and whether the first person destined to live to 1000 had already been born.

Clinical  Homecare

From the sublime (last item) to the The National Clinical Homecare Association‘s conference on 31st January, where this Editor also spoke on how digital health could help people to be treated in their own homes. Notable was the absence of any Twitter handle for the Association, no hashtag for the conference and just two people it seemed out of 250 using social media. Clearly there are huge opportunities here for digital health suppliers, particularly as so much of what was said by other speakers, and what was being shown in the exhibition was very much manually-intensive stuff: join the NCHA and start a revolution in clinical homecare! 

Recent developments in AI

Since this editor stopped active involvement in conference organisation for the Royal Society of Medicine it is encouraging to see that the younger generation has picked up the baton and is running even harder, such that the above event, on 26th February, has proved so popular that it has been moved to the largest (300 seater) lecture theatre at the Society, and on current sign-up rate will sell out.  Speakers from Babylon, Ada Health, DeepMind, Kheiron Medical, BenevolentAI, UCL Life Sciences & Alan Turing AI partnership, and many more will ensure that delegates gain a comprehensive understanding of how AI is being used across healthcare. Book here to experience the delights of the new RSM all-new website which makes signing up for an event so much easier than in the past. Fear not though: the RSM’s legendary low ticket costs are maintained!

Wayra and Novartis

A most exciting event this week was the announcement of the joint Wayra and Novartis health call now looking for their next cohort of remarkable start-ups to join their new programme called The Health Hub. This is built together with their new partner Novartis, one of the leading pharma companies. Their focus is on how healthtech can be used drastically to innovate long-term disease management. Apply here, by February 17th. Hat tip to Professor Mike Short for this item and other observations in this post .

Rewired Pitchfest

Early health tech entrepreneurs should consider taking part in the Rewired Pitchfest at the Digital Health Rewired Conference and Exhibition, Olympia London on 26 March. Sponsored by Silver Buck, this provides the opportunity for early stage digital health start-ups to showcase their disruptive ideas and prototypes to NHS IT leaders. Applicants will compete before a judging panel featuring investors and successful start-up founders. It’s a great way to gain significant exposure and make connections with a diverse range of UK digital health leaders…and the winner will be announced, and congratulated, by Matt Hancock himself! There is also the chance of winning a mentoring programme with the experts on the judging panel and PR features in Digital Health News. (Disclosure: this editor is on the Programme Committee of Rewired, as well as being a Pitch judge)

Punning headlines

It’s rare that a single item is worthy of its own paragraph on TTA these days however an exception must surely be made for one of the few punning headlines to be found in digital health, especially as it’s for such an old – and until now undelivered – idea: “Smart toilet seat is flush with possibilities to monitor patients’ health”

Verily, Google’s life sciences arm, gathers in another billion to go…where? (updated for Study Watch FDA clearance)

January 17, 2019 | by

Biotech/device company Verily added to its 2016 $800 million stake from Singapore’s Temasek a fresh $1 bn from Silver Lake Partners. with reported participation from Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan. Verily is majority-owned by Google parent Alphabet, which has added a new member to the Verily board, CFO Ruth Porat, and Egon Durbat from Silver Lake.

CEO Andrew Conrad, who is still there despite a brace of bad press two years ago [TTA 6 Apr 16], stated that “We are taking external funding to increase flexibility and optionality as we expand on our core strategic focus areas. Adding a well-rounded group of seasoned investors, led by Silver Lake, will further prepare us to execute as healthcare continues the shift towards evidence generation and value-based reimbursement models.”

One is tempted to say, ‘whatever that means’. They have had multiple ventures from contact lenses with Novartis’ subsidiary Alcon (reportedly discontinued but dating back with Google to 2014), diabetes with Sanofi, to sleep apnea with ResMed. VentureBeat reports they are cash-profitable and even venturing into areas such as small exploding needles that can extract blood through a wearable device–not precisely for the needle-phobic. There seem to be multiple projects in multiple directions that are primarily research. Certainly their finding at $1.8 bn is an outlier even at 2018’s big scale–but with Alphabet/Google as a parent and A-list partners, the risk is minimal. Mobihealthnews, Crunchbase

FDA clearance of Verily’s Study Watch. Late last week, Verily announced that their Study Watch was given a 510(k) FDA clearance. It records, stores, transfers and displays single-channel ECG. To date, there are no plans to use it beyond a handful of research studies primarily on cardiac disease. Mobihealthnews. Meanwhile, Google, not Verily, paid Fossil $40 million for a still under development smartwatch technology to fit into Google’s Ware OS area. It’s not known whether it is health related, but their CEO admitted that it was based on tech from the Misfit acquisition–and Misfit was focused on health tech. After the sale closing, it is predicted that some Fossil R&D staff will move over to Google. Back in 2015, Fossil paid $260 million for Misfit and their fitness tech but generally has stayed in the conventional smartwatch area. The story broke in Wareable. Also Mobihealthnews.

Contact lenses as a drug delivery system take home MIT Sloan Healthcare prize

March 21, 2018 | by

This Editor has been covering contact lenses in health tech since at least 2013–contact lenses that detect glucose for diabetics (Google/Novartis/Alcon), eye pressure (Sensimed), and even detect multiple diseases (Oregon State University). None to date have made it into commercial release.

Here’s another try, this time from this year’s winner of the MIT Sloan Healthcare Innovation Prize competition. Theraoptix won the $25,000 grand prize, sponsored by Optum. The lenses are designed to deliver eye medication on a time release basis using a thin polymer film formed into a tiny circular strip sandwiched into the lens material. They can be worn for up to two weeks to slowly but constantly deliver drugs in the treatment of diseases like glaucoma or after surgery. It can also deliver drugs effectively for back of the eye treatment of macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinal vein occlusion, and similar diseases that today require in-office injections.

Theraoptix was developed by Lokendra Bengani Ph.D. of the Schepens Eye Research Institute of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. It was based on core technology by ophthalmologist Joseph B. Ciolino MD, who is Dr. Bengani’s mentor. We wrote about Dr. Ciolino’s research previously [TTA 7 Sept 16] including a look back at contact lens research. There were seven other finalists, of which the most interesting to this Editor was Kinematics shoe insole sensors for gait detection analysis (and fall prevention).  MIT News. 

Can Big Pharmas hiring of digital execs actually ‘reimagine medicine’?

September 20, 2017 | by

Reimagination or hallucination? In recent weeks, both Glaxo Smith Kline and now Novartis have hired digital analytics and marketing executives out of non-healthcare businesses to lead their digital transformation. For GSK, Karenann Terrell joined in the new position of chief digital and technology officer from six years as chief information officer for Walmart and CIO for pharma Baxter International. From Sainsbury’s Argos, Bertrand Bodson will be assuming the chief digital officer title at Novartis without any previous healthcare experience.

Both are expected to be transformative, disruptive, and ‘reimagine medicine’. Ms. Terrell’s experience and accomplishments appear to be the closest fit to her GSK’s job expectations of integrating digital, data, and analytics strategy with enhancing clinical trials and drug discovery, as well as improving professional and consumer interactions. Novartis’ mission for Mr. Bodson aims even higher. In addition to these, he will be ‘transforming our business model using digital technologies’, ‘reimagine (sic) medicine by leveraging digital on behalf of millions of patients and practitioners’, and ‘leading cultural change’.

Both companies have good starts in advanced technologies–GSK in AI, sensor technologies for managing COPD, and a medical device mobile app; Novartis with ‘smart pill’ Proteus, a pilot with heart medication Entresto tied to monitoring and coaching, and through its Alcon subsidiary with Google, a wired-up contact lens that detects blood glucose [TTA 17 July 14]. However, this last appears to be stalled in trials and Alcon on the block. According to the FT, Novartis is feeling the pressure to develop more digital partnerships, such as Novo Nordisk’s teaming with Glooko and Sanofi with Verily Life, all in diabetic management. Acquisitions may also be the way forward.

A significant impediment to all this integration is consumer and professional trust. If too closely tied to a pharmaceutical company or appearing to be too self-serving, remote monitoring and counseling may not be trusted to be in the patient’s (or doctor’s) best interest or objective as to better approaches. The overuse of analytics, for instance in counseling or patient direction, may be perceived as violating patient privacy–creeping out the patient isn’t helpful. The bottom line: will these digital technologies serve the patient and maintain medical best practices–or best serve the pharmaceutical company’s interests?

This Editor doesn’t question these individuals’ ability, but the organizations’ capability for change. But count this Editor as a skeptic on whether one or two digital execs can marshal the bandwidth and the internal credibility to transform these lumbering, complex, regulated, and long cycle businesses. Big Retail is fast moving by comparison. PMLive 31 July (GSK), 13 Sept (Novartis)  Hat tip to TTA alumna Toni Bunting

Diabetes management: the Next Big Health Tech Thing?

September 14, 2016 | by

Big Data? Passé. Health IT security and hacking? At a peak. So what’s the Next Big Thing? If you’re tracking where the money’s going, it’s diabetes management. This week saw the joint venture Onduo formed by the controversial [TTA 6 Apr] life sciences-focused Verily (Google Alphabet) and Big Pharma Sanofi with a nest egg of $500 million. Onduo will be combining devices with services to help Type II diabetics. Based upon CEO Joshua Riff’s statements to MedCityNews, their platforms are yet to be developed, but “will be a digital platform that will involve software, hardware, and very importantly service” to change patient behaviors. Partnerships with Sutter Health in Northern California and Allegheny Health Network of western Pennsylvania will test their approaches in a clinical setting. Xconomy, Reuters

Verily’s other diabetes project include the £540 million bioelectronics partnership announced in August with UK-based GSK in Galvani Electronics [TTA 3 Aug] with a focus on inflammatory, metabolic and endocrine disorders, including Type II diabetes. With Dexcom, Verily is also building an inexpensive, smaller next-gen continuous glucose monitoring sensor; Mr Riff was coy about whether this sensor would be used but allowed that sensors might be used in Onduo’s approaches. Verily is also developing the well-known glucose-reading contact lens with Novartis [TTA 1 Sep 15].

Also this week, Glooko and Sweden’s Diasend announced their merger (more…)

Contact lenses as sight-saving drug delivery system

September 7, 2016 | by

A drug-dispensing contact lens has shown success in effectively lowering eye pressure in monkeys with induced glaucoma. In what is termed a ‘pre-clinical model’, the study found that the medication, latanoprost, usually administered by the patient in conventional eye drops, in the contact lens form had equal or better intraocular pressure reduction. To quote the study’s first author, “We found that a lower-dose contact lens delivered the same amount of pressure reduction as the latanoprost drops, and a higher-dose lens, interestingly enough, had better pressure reduction than the drops in our small study,” said Joseph B. Ciolino, M.D., an ophthalmologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. The design of the lens does double duty: the periphery contains the thin film of drug-encapsulated polymers that slowly releases the drug; the center of the lens is clear and breathable, thus usable for standard vision correction.

Contact lenses for drug delivery have been for decades intriguing to researchers, but the embedded drug delivery has been too rapid to be effective in most cases; thus the polymers and the design are critical in slowing delivery. (more…)

Alphabet action versus diabetes with Life Sciences’ contact lens and Sanofi

September 1, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/google-contacts_1401174_616.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /] Monday’s Big Story. As previously reported [TTA 25 Aug], the new Google holding company Alphabet is bringing the Life Sciences group formerly under Google X into its own company, with a new name TBD. On Monday, Life Sciences and Paris-based pharma Sanofi announced a partnership on projects related to diabetes monitoring and treatment. According to BioSpace, “at least part of the partnership will be focusing on helping Life Sciences create small, Internet-based devices that either automatically adjust insulin levels, or make suggestions based on real-time monitoring. ”

Clearly Life Sciences’ raison d’etre includes a focus on this disease, others that may relate to it, and in developing devices that others may market. Your Editors have been tracking their research for well over a year. A roundup of Life Sciences’ partnerships include more than diabetes:

**Novartis division Alcon for the glucose sensing contact lens [TTA 17 July 14, patent report 27 Mar 15 ]

** DexCom to develop a Band-Aid sized wearable for glucose monitoring, announced 15 August

**A 10 year deal with Abbvie for age-related disease exploration (which relates to the accelerated aging associated with diabetes)

**Biogen for multiple sclerosis (MS) treatments

We continue to have doubts about the practicality of the contact lens and the viability of embedded sensors in lenses, as the eyes are extremely sensitive and especially vulnerable for those with diabetes. But directionally on this disease, which is expanding almost uncontrollably worldwide, the research and devices which Life Sciences can develop for a variety of companies looks promising. Business Insider, Re/Code, Digital Trends

Novartis extends ViaOpta app for visually impaired to smartwatches

July 7, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ViaOpta-Nav-Apple-Watch.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]New to this Editor (and I suspect our Readers) in assistive technologies for wearables are Novartis’ ViaOpta apps to aid the visually impaired and facilitate their independence as well as safety. Now available for smartwatches as well as smartphones, its features are primarily centered on assisting with navigation, including (new) points of interest and worldwide maps. Another new feature, recognizing and ‘reading’ both scenes and objects, is for smartphone only because it is dependent on the phone’s camera. Cues are both audio, vibration and visual (see left). Novartis claims this is the first wearable app designed specifically for the visually impaired and blind, now estimated at 285 million worldwide. It’s available in 11 languages and best of all, it’s a free download. Smartwatch demo is on YouTube. Novartis release. Mobihealthnews.

Google granted patent for sensor contact lens

March 27, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/google-contacts_1401174_616.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]On Tuesday, Google was granted a patent for its contact lens with sensors and embedded microchip. According to Time, the patent award was uncovered by WebProNews, which seems to be focused more on the problems of Google Glass than the patent, though the abstract and a development figure is included. The patent was originally filed in September 2012. We’ve previously noted that Google is partnering with Novartis/Alcon (their eyecare division) to further develop applications. The most prominent is glucose level detection for diabetics, but there is also a huge market in correcting presbyopia and autofocusing ‘zoom’ lenses [TTA 17 July 14] Of course, Google does not admit to any of this, telling a Time reporter that “We hold patents on a variety of ideas—some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patents.” So we should keep blinking.

A mélange of short subjects for Tuesday

March 17, 2015 | by

ATA accredits American Well, Apple ResearchKit, diabetic contact lenses, Hackermania Falls on Indiana, patent trolls get a haircut, and more

The ATA (American Telemedicine Association) has gained more than 200 applications for their US-only Accreditation Program for Online Patient Consultations [TTA 17 Dec 14]. First past the post in accreditation is American Well’s Amwell virtual visit app, which will shortly be listed on the ATA consumer website SafeOnlineHealth.org. Release, MedCityNews….Stanford University, one of the five academic centers using the Apple ResearchKit, had a mind-boggling 11,000 signups for a heart health study–in 24 hours. The downside is that they may not be representative of the whole population [TTA 10 Mar, see 11 Mar update] including us Android users. 9to5Mac….The Google-Novartis glucose-measuring contact lens [TTA 17 July 14] for diabetes management just gained some Canadian competition–Medella Health in Kitchener, Ontario, founded by a team of (more…)

Google, Novartis team on ‘smart contact lens’ for diabetics

July 17, 2014 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/116-fam_1a.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]Despite Sergey and Larry’s vapors over healthcare [TTA 10 July], Google is joining with the Alcon eyewear/eyecare division of Novartis to further develop the smart contact lens. With a licensing deal between them, the initial Google X-Novartis project is the smart contact lens that contains a low power microchip and a hair-thin electronic circuit. It would initially measure blood glucose for diabetics, but also in Novartis’ president’s words, would meet additional “unmet medical needs” within the next five years. Our profile of the lens exactly six months ago [TTA 17 July] has additional detail, including the practicality (and injury potential) of contact lenses for diabetics, especially thicker ones with ‘circuitry’. (Also see the comment below the article.) Another area (and a much-needed, thus profitable one) is age-related farsightedness and creating an ‘autofocusing’ lens much like a zoom lens. Certainly a partner like Alcon will help work through the questions and also steer the X-Marks-The-Spot lens through the usual FDA review that marks the muddy spot before the rainbow. Google Smart Contact Lens Focuses On Healthcare Billions (Forbes)