CONTACT LENSES have come a long way since they were conceptualized by DaVinci and Descartes. Their ideas proposed an optical platform with contact on the eye.
Fast forward to our modern contact lenses; now, nearly all aspects of visual optical abnormalities can be corrected, including standard refractive errors, presbyopia, and irregular corneas. As an optical device, the contact lens continues to offer more advancements, and higher-order aberrations are the next frontier to be explored.
But perhaps the most exciting aspect of the future of contact lenses is their potential use beyond vision improvement. A recent study reviewed the literature to explore how contact lenses have been used as a tool for medicine (Aravind et al, 2025). Studies have looked into using contact lenses to monitor intraocular pressure (IOP), the moisture in the eye, proteins, glucose, electrolytes, pH, lactate, and much more.
Using the contact lens as a diagnostic device seems a worthy place to start for those who are enthralled with wearables for understanding their own bodies. Contact lens innovations beyond diagnosing conditions are also on the horizon. One example of this is a drug-eluting contact lens that was introduced for the treatment of ocular allergies (Ono and Toshida, 2022), although that type of contact lens is not currently available for prescription.
The methods needed to achieve further innovations beyond our current contact lens technology are complex, and they require advanced engineering. Because a contact lens surface— and the amount of tear fluid in contact with the lens—are limited, future developments may be addressed with something called microfluidics, a system that excels at handling very small fluid levels.
Microchannels can be created in contact lenses to enable flow control (Aravind et al, 2025), mixing, sensing, and releasing back into the ocular environment, which would be ideal for drug delivery. Microfluidics can enable contact lenses to have continuous on-eye tear interactions that carry many benefits, such as better precision and multifunctionality of the lens. In other words, it could allow the lens to both detect a problem (such as an elevated IOP) and deliver of a dose of corrective medication.
The future has to be the place for this innovation. Advancements are not yet able to deliver this concept on a mass scale. That said, as we have seen with many other advancements, the concept and proof of concept often lead to success in manufacturing.
This is a whole new realm for futurists in eye care. It is exciting to see the stages that engineering and vision scientists go through to bring advanced detection and management to our contact lens-wearing patients.
References
1. Aravind M, Saxena A, Mishra D, Singh K, George SD. Microfluidic contact lens: fabrication approaches and applications. Microsyst Nanoeng. 2025;11(1):59. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-025-00909-3
2. Ono J, Toshida H. Use of ketotifen fumarate-eluting daily disposable soft contact lens in management of ocular allergy: literature review and report of two cases. Cureus. 2022 Jul 21;14(7):e27093. doi: 10.7759/cureus.27093
