Thanks to a licensing agreement concluded with UltraVision CLPL, Bausch + Lomb has started to offer silicone hydrogel contact lenses designed for patients suffering from keratoconus as well as some other conditions related to an irregular shape of the cornea.

The lenses are called KeraSoft IC and use several patented technologies offering both enhanced visual acuity and comfort to patients with irregular corneas caused by, for instance, a trauma, a surgery or a disease. Traditionally, such patients had to wear rigid gas permeable contact lenses, which are not appropriate for some of them, leading to shorter wear times and discomfort.

The director of Global GP and Custom Soft Lens Business for Bausch + Lomb, David Bland, stated that KeraSoft IC contact lenses will become a great option for patients with irregular corneas as soon as eye care practitioners gain more knowledge about them and about the process of fitting them. The company offers special training to all practitioners, so the lenses should widely available quite soon.

Though the majority of contact lenses users believe that it is not a good idea to wear lenses in periods in which allergies usually exacerbate, experts point out that there are very effective methods of dealing with allergies, which do not require long breaks in contact lens wear.

According to News USA, allergic conjunctivitis occurs when a person’s eye comes into contact with an allergen (pollen, dust, animal hair, etc.), resulting in severe discomfort. The best thing to do in such cases is to take contact lenses out, but it does not mean that a person cannot put them back in as soon as the symptoms are under control.

What is more, the source assures that the number of methods of controlling allergies, which include pills and eye drops, is constantly increasing. Also, modern contact lenses are much more comfortable for allergic patients and new lenses that will make the lives of allergic contact lens wearers much easier are being developed by several manufacturers.

Coloured contact lenses and carefully designed costumes have allowed Amy Jackson, a rising film star and model, to disappear into her character in Ek Deewana Tha.

The director of the film, Gautham Menon, wanted the actress to blend into her role (a conservative Malayali-Christian girl) and not just sell Ek Deewana Tha with her exotic beauty, which is why he paid a lot of attention to details such as contact lenses. The lenses turned Amy Jackson’s green eyes into brown ones, which – as she admits – helped her become Jessie on the set. The beginning of work in Bollywood was quite a shock, the actress revealed, but she soon got used to it thanks to the support from her colleagues, family and friends.

Amy Jackson’s career has been developing extremely fast. Having won several beauty pageants, including Miss Teen World (2008), she became a professional model, which led to proposals from the film industry.

Her first project was Madrasapattinam, a picture filmed in Tamil, for which she received a nomination for the Vijay Award for Best Debut Actress.

Working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Washington, Microsoft’s science team is developing a contact lenses capable of monitoring blood glucose levels.

The so-called “Functional Contact Lenses” may (according to the researchers) make the currently used blood tests obsolete, as they will be able to provide data concerning changes in blood sugar concentration immediately, which will be a great help for all patients suffering from diabetes. The possibility of being informed of changes in blood glucose levels immediately means that the patient can respond to those changes straight away, taking their medications and this way preventing dangerous complications.

The lenses work by using bio-compatible electrodes which are placed on the surface of the lens. These electrodes measure the results of interactions of an enzyme with eye fluid, subsequently wirelessly transmitting data onto a computer, a smartphone or a tablet.

All data related to the measurements taken by the lenses will be stored digitally, which the patient’s physician will be able to use to optimise the treatment.

Contact lenses that allow their users to enjoy virtual reality games and applications without the need to wear large and heavy head gear have been presented at CES 2012.

The contact lenses (referred to as iOptik) are part of a virtual reality system developed by Innovega. They have embedded special filters and optics, which – when a person wears specially designed glasses incorporating tiny LCD or OLED displays – enable a person to see not only what appears on the displays (which is normally too small to see), but also what is in the background. Both the image on the display and the world around the user are in focus and the user can concentrate on the elements of their choice.

According to the company, it is possible to fit such micro-displays onto standard sunglasses and still see full-colour, electronic images.

Innovega was founded four years ago and focuses on developing technologies associated with contact lenses capable of enhancing human sight. Its founders are experienced experts specialising in near-eye displays, contact lenses and Micro Optical Electro-Mechanical Systems.