Gone are the days when glasses were simply for seeing better. Today’s eyewear is getting seriously smart, offering audiology, health and fitness tracking, entertainment, and constant connectivity. What was once a fictional fantasy is now a rapidly evolving reality.

WRITER Melanie Kell

The smart eyewear revolution represents a massive opportunity – now and into the future – for eye care professionals to expand their clinical toolkit.

Because although “eyewear has to first look beautiful”, according to Francesco Milleri, Chair and CEO of EssilorLuxottica, these days consumers are increasingly looking for eyewear that also delivers functionality far beyond vision correction.

And there’s clear evidence for this. When Ray-Ban Meta glasses launched in late 2023 with integrated video camera, speakers, and microphone functionality, two million pairs sold in just nine months. In response to demand, in April this year EssilorLuxottica came out with a significant advancement on its eyewear technology, integrating Meta AI.

Rocco Basilico, Chief Wearables Officer at EssilorLuxottica, said this next chapter for Ray-Ban Meta “is about more than innovation, it’s about delivering a product that feels effortless, expressive, and accessible”.

With upgraded software, wearers can collaborate with Meta AI on ideas based on what they see. They can capture photos and videos from their point of view, or listen to music and podcasts, make a call, even send a text on the go – all without taking out their phone. Live translation means they can converse with someone speaking Spanish, Italian, or French and translate it in real time.

Many patients who require vision correction also experience hearing difficulties. Again, EssilorLuxottica is dominating this space. Its acquisition of Nuance Hearing in 2023 has created a clinical pathway to address both sensory needs simultaneously.

Nuance audio glasses incorporate proprietary technologies from recently acquired Pulse Audition, including AI-based noise reduction and voice enhancement algorithms that allow patients with hearing impairment to better distinguish speech in challenging environments. This integrated approach could significantly improve quality of life for the estimated 1.25 billion people worldwide experiencing mild to moderate hearing loss.

Mr Milleri is justifiably proud of this innovation, which was recognised as an honoree in the digital health category of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovation Awards in Las Vegas. He said the audio glasses are the result of an ambition, set down two years ago, to “create a first-o-fits-kind product that would change the way people see and hear”.

“We didn’t just aim to combine two medical devices – we created an entirely new smart glasses form factor to support the two human senses we depend on the most. It is not only groundbreaking, but also incredibly accessible.

“We’re pleased now to turn our focus to getting this life-changing technology into the hands of people around the world who truly need it.”

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for OTC Nuance Audio Glasses, along with CE Mark approval under the European Medical Devices Regulation and ISO Quality Management System certification earlier this year, provides regulatory assurance for recommending these solutions. Approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia should be coming through any time now.

And this is just the beginning. Looking ahead, Mr Milleri suggests future smart eyewear may offer expanded health monitoring capabilities, including retina examinations that could detect early signs of diabetes. Such technologies could help position practices at the forefront of preventative healthcare.

Outside of EssilorLuxottica, other companies are actively pursuing smart eyewear. One is Revo, which released its Sonic 3 frames earlier this year. For athletic patients seeking both sharp vision and lifestyle tech, this technology merits consideration. The lightweight, water-resistant frames come with NASA-based polarised lenses, and a temple designed for all-day comfort. Optional fitness tracking capabilities add further value for health-conscious patients, and the frames are scriptable.

As Revo explained, consumers increasingly value “discreet tech integration and multifunctionality in a stylish, everyday form factor”, which is what the Sonic 3 delivers. Subtle controls on the temples enable the user to play music, make calls, and change the volume with a single touch. The frames are Bluetooth enabled and compatible with Apple and Android devices.

For practitioners monitoring the technology roadmap, Revo predicts the next five years will bring “advances like augmented reality overlays, artificial intelligence assistants, real-time translation, and biometric health monitoring”.

Specsavers’ ongoing pilot of smart glasses manufactured by Solos demonstrates another smart tech pathway worth monitoring. Equipped with SolosChat (powered by ChatGPT), these glasses use ‘natural language’ processing to facilitate voice-activated tasks, potentially offering significant benefits for patients with mobility challenges or those managing multiple health conditions alongside vision correction.

For patients with active lifestyles, Solos smart glasses come with integrated fitness tracking capabilities via inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors and the Solos AirGo app. The system offers real-time activity tracking and guided exercises, including posture reminders that could reduce neck strain for presbyopic patients adapting to progressive lenses.

Solos’ Whisper Audio technology, with its noise-cancelling and directional audio capabilities, may particularly benefit patients who report difficulty hearing in crowded environments but aren’t ready for traditional hearing aids.

Perhaps most significantly for practices serving diverse communities, SolosTranslate supports real-time translation across 28 languages. This could dramatically improve communication during consultations with non-native speaking patients, enhancing both clinical outcomes and patient experience. As another potential option for smart eyewear, it’s hoped that this pilot proves successful and Specsavers rolls the tech out soon.

Google is partnering with several companies to develop extended reality (XR) headsets and glasses with access to Gemini, Google’s AI assistant. A Samsung and Qualcomm/ Google Android XR headset enables users to switch between being fully immersed in a virtual environment and staying present in the real world.

In May 2024, the retail company Xreal – a Chinese company backed by the global wholesale marketplace, Alibaba – launched Project Aura, extended reality glasses that run Google’s XR operating system. Xreal said the glasses will be “tethered”, meaning they will connect to another device to run.

Kering Eyewear also announced a partnership with Google for the development of AI-powered glasses with Android XR, “combining cutting-edge design, intelligent features, and human-centric technology in one device”.

Roberto Vedovotto, Founder, President, and CEO of Kering Eyewear said that, together with Google, “we are shaping a product that people will want to wear: a pair of masterfully designed, high-quality, stylish glasses that unlock the potential of artificial intelligence, while redefining the way of interacting with both the real and virtual worlds”.

As the line between biology and technology continues to blur, smart contact lenses are enabling us to interact with the world – and each other – in ways we’ve only imagined.

Triggerfish (Sensimed) led this move with a smart contact lens that provides continuous monitoring of ocular volume changes to help guide glaucoma treatment. CE Marked and approved by the FDA, Triggerfish is described as “a soft disposable silicone contact lens embedding a micro-sensor that captures spontaneous circumferential changes at the corneoscleral area”.

The patient wears the system for up to 24 hours and continues their everyday activities, including sleep, while the Triggerfish monitors for ocular change. An adhesive Triggerfish antenna, placed around the eye, wirelessly receives information from the contact lens. Data is transmitted via cable to a portable recorder and, at the end of the recording period, is transferred via Bluetooth to software previously installed on the practitioner’s computer.

The Triggerfish contact lens and antenna.

According to Professor Mario Schlund, Head of Technology and Product Manager at Sensimed, the company continues to evolve its Triggerfish technology and, following “a successful pilot study”, expects to bring a new lens capable of measuring intraocular pressure to market “very soon”.

Neuroscientists and materials scientists have created contact lenses that enable infrared vision in both humans and mice by converting infrared light into visible light. Unlike infrared night vision goggles, the contact lenses do not require a power source, and they enable the wearer to perceive multiple infrared wavelengths. Because they’re transparent, users can see both infrared and visible light simultaneously, though infrared vision is enhanced when participants have their eyes closed.

“Our research opens up the potential for non-invasive wearable devices to give people super-vision,” said Professor Tian Xue, a neuroscientist at the University of Science and Technology of China. “There are many potential applications right away for this material. For example, flickering infrared light could be used to transmit information in security, rescue, encryption or anti-counterfeiting settings.”

The contact lens technology uses nanoparticles that absorb infrared light and convert it into wavelengths that are visible to mammalian eyes (e.g., electromagnetic radiation in the 400–700 nm range). These nanoparticles are combined with flexible, non-toxic polymers that are used in standard soft contact lenses.

Mice wearing the contact lenses have displayed behaviours suggesting that they can see infrared wavelengths. Additionally, the pupils of contact-wearing mice constricted in the presence of infrared light, and brain imaging revealed that infrared light caused their visual processing centres to light up.

In humans, the infrared contact lenses enabled participants to accurately detect flashing morse code-like signals and to perceive the direction of incoming infrared light. “It’s totally clear cut: without the contact lenses, the subject cannot see anything, but when they put them on, they can clearly see the flickering of the infrared light,” said Prof Xue. “We also found that when the subject closes their eyes, they’re even better able to receive this flickering information, because near-infrared light penetrates the eyelid more effectively than visible light, so there is less interference from visible light.”

By engineering the nanoparticles to colour code different infrared wavelengths, the contact lenses allow users to differentiate between different spectra of infrared light. For example, infrared wavelengths of 980 nm were converted to blue light, wavelengths of 808 nm were converted to green light, and wavelengths of 1,532 nm were converted to red light. In addition to enabling wearers to perceive more detail within the infrared spectrum, these colour-coding nanoparticles could be modified to help people with colour blindness see wavelengths that they would otherwise be unable to detect.

“By converting red visible light into something like green visible light, this technology could make the invisible visible for colour blind people,” said Prof Xue.

Because the contact lenses have limited ability to capture fine details (due to their proximity to the retina, which causes the converted light particles to scatter), the team also developed a wearable glass system using the same nanoparticle technology, enabling participants to perceive higher-resolution infrared information.

Currently, the contact lenses are only able to detect infrared radiation projected from an LED light source, but the researchers are working to increase the nanoparticles’ sensitivity so that they can detect lower levels of infrared light.

“In the future, by working together with materials scientists and optical experts, we hope to make a contact lens with more precise spatial resolution and higher sensitivity,” said Prof Xue.

XPANCEO, a Dubai-based company founded in 2021, is taking contact lens technology forward in leaps and bounds, developing “invisible and weightless smart contact lenses” that will merge multiple gadgets to create an infinite extended reality experience, combined with serious healthcare benefits.

This is not an overnight product development: As contact lenses are a medical advice, the company is obliged to undertake clinical trials and have them certified by the authorities. To this end, pre-clinical trials for individual components of its smart contact lens have been underway this year and XPANCEO plans to start testing the complete contact lens with all features by the end of 2026.

XPANCEO is building its technology from the ground up, using a technical stack based on 2D materials and a novel engineering approach. The company has thrown significant resources at this venture, recently securing US$40 million in seed funding – the largest seed round in the Arab region and 24th globally, reflecting “the magnitude and ambition” of its work.

In an interview with mivision, Roman Axelrod, XPANCEO’s Co-founder and Managing Partner, and Valentyn Volkov, Co-founder and Scientific Partner, said they were working with a “world-class team of scientists and engineers”.

“Fifty per cent of our researchers hold PhDs with significant citation records… we’ve built what is now recognised as one of the top three start-ups in physics by Nature Index. Our vision is bold, and so is the level of investment and talent required to realise it,” said Mr Axelrod.

“Existing devices require users to adapt to fixed interaction modes. They’re bulky, inconvenient, limited in functionality, and not universal. Users are forced to adjust to small screens, buttons, and controls,” he said. “We are developing the next generation of computing, a smart contact lens that aims to replace multiple existing gadgets – such as smartphones, smartwatches, AR/VR (artificial reality / virtual reality) headsets, and health monitoring devices – with a single, invisible, and weightless solution.”

Additionally, he said, these extraordinarily smart and tiny medical devices will “significantly reduce the need for many electronic devices, contributing to the minimisation of e-waste and the environmental burden associated with device production and disposal”.

“This development will fundamentally change the way people interact with modern technology and will transform the perception of the real and digital worlds, including social media, content consumption, and gaming.

Interaction with the outside world will change in almost any situation, from the simplest actions – such as the ability to pay a bill or transfer money to a friend with a glance – to the most advanced applications based on artificial intelligence.”

Beyond the social and day-to-day life enhancing features, Dr Volkov said smart contact lenses will increase personal health awareness and facilitate remote monitoring of patients, contributing to the treatment of non-communicable diseases.

“Smart contact lenses are evolving into miniature bio-chemical laboratories worn directly on the eye. For example, XPANCEO has developed a prototype of a smart contact lens capable of continuously monitoring physiological parameters by analysing tear fluid – eliminating the need for invasive blood sampling. This lens integrates a high-precision biosensor that detects biomarkers in real time. To enhance sensitivity and accuracy, the system leverages nanoparticles that amplify the biochemical signals present in the tear fluid, enabling precise, low-concentration measurements under noninvasive conditions.”

Another prototype – a smart contact lens with an intraocular pressure (IOP) sensor – “offers one of the most advanced non-invasive solutions for glaucoma monitoring available today”.

“Like Prof Xue's team, XPANCEO has also developed a smart lens prototype that uses nanoparticles for colour correction, helping people with colour blindness perceive a wider range of colours without relying on bulky glasses. A separate night vision prototype improves visibility in low-light conditions, expanding the potential of wearable vision-enhancing technologies.”

Even with the backing of money and brain power, bringing such concepts to life has not been without significant challenges, the primary one being to achieve the extreme miniaturisation necessary to integrate sophisticated optoelectronic components – including microprojectors for image generation, biosensors for health monitoring, and electronics for power management and communication – into a form factor that remains as thin, transparent, and lightweight as conventional vision correction lenses.

“A significant limitation stems from the inherent optical properties of traditional materials used in optoelectronics,” Dr Volkov explained. “Characteristics such as refractive index, optical anisotropy, and optical losses encountered during light propagation impose fundamental constraints on reducing the size of the optoelectronic devices integrated into contact lenses. These intrinsic limitations mean that conventional optical materials cannot effectively support the ultraminiaturisation required for such applications.”

To overcome these fundamental challenges, XPANCEO has adopted advanced and emerging technologies specifically suited for microscale optoelectronics:

Advanced optics and nanophotonics: Standard optical components fail to function effectively at the microscale. By leveraging nanophotonic technologies, XPANCEO precisely manipulates light beyond the diffraction limit, enabling smaller and more efficient optoelectronic devices,

Novel 2D materials: These materials, often only a single atom thick, offer exceptional electronic, optical, and mechanical properties unmatched by traditional materials. Their high flexibility, optical transparency, and superior conductivity are crucial for embedding efficient optoelectronic components into a comfortable and unobtrusive lens design.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning: Traditional methods of modelling and optimising optoelectronic devices are resource-intensive and slow. AI-driven modelling and machine learning significantly accelerate the design and optimisation processes, enabling rapid prototyping and refinement of integrated lens technologies.

“By combining these innovative solutions, we successfully address the fundamental limitations posed by traditional optoelectronic materials, enabling the development of practical, efficient, and user-friendly smart contact lenses,” Dr Volkov said.

However, the challenges continue with the XPANCEO team now working to overcome several even more complex topics.

“One of the main tasks is developing a custom display small enough to fit inside a smart contact lens while providing high-quality visual output,” Dr Volkov explained. “Since no commercially available display meets these requirements, we are working in partnership with industry leaders to co-create a bespoke solution.

XPANCEO’s contact lens in development.

“In parallel, we have already developed many key components of the lens at the prototype level. The next critical step is integrating all these technologies into a single lens without compromising their individual performance or properties.

“We are also preparing for the start of human trials,” said Dr Volkov. “Since the smart contact lens is worn directly on the eye, XPANCEO treats it not as a consumer gadget, but as a medical device. This classification brings strict regulatory requirements, including biocompatibility testing and clinical validation. These processes are complex and time-consuming – but they are absolutely essential to ensure safety and effectiveness.”

Looking to the next five to 10 years, the XPANCEO leaders said we can expect smart contact lenses to move “from cutting-edge prototypes to real-world applications”.

“Within five years, we expect the technology to be used in limited, high-impact use cases – for example, in advanced manufacturing, healthcare monitoring, or the automobile industry – where the benefits of hands-free augmented vision and real-time data are most critical,” said Mr Axelrod. “Our goal is to start scaling from 15,000 users in 2027, aiming to reach 10 million by 2032, when smart contact lenses are expected to become a truly mainstream product. These contact lenses will become an invisible extension of our bodies, enhancing human perception and capabilities without the need for external devices.”

With commercialisation directly tied to regulatory approvals, XPANCEO cannot commit to a specific release date at this stage, however, it is already working on making the device affordable.

“We expect costs to be comparable to those of a smartphone for an annual supply of replaceable smart contact lenses. Because of this ambition, safety and compliance are especially important at every stage,” Mr Axelrod concluded.

What was once perceived as far-fetched fiction will soon be our fantastic reality.