The MedGadget blog reported last week on contact lenses being developed by a team of researchers from MIT, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and Children’s Hospital Boston, that can deliver a continuous, extended release of pharmaceuticals. Commercial applications of the technology are being developed through a startup company called Eyenovations.

Briefly, the team developed a hydrogel lens with a polymer film inside that contains a medication. The medication is released from the contact lens gradually, and the rate of release can be controlled by altering the properties of the polymer film and the lens. Currently, the lenses can deliver high doses of medication for up to 100 days — a substantial improvement over past efforts in this area.

One positive application may be overcoming the poor compliance of glaucoma patients in taking their eye drops (we’ve previously blogged about how glaucoma medication compliance is very poor ^[1]). The lens would deliver the required doses automatically without patient intervention.

Read ^[2] the full blog post on MedGadget.

See a further writeup in the MIT Technology Review ^[3].