Beyond Wearables

In the space between science fiction and reality, XPANCEO has unveiled a technology poised to alter our fundamental relationship with both our health and the digital realm. At Mobile World Congress 2025, the company demonstrated functional prototypes o…


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Tim Green

In the space between science fiction and reality, XPANCEO has unveiled a technology poised to alter our fundamental relationship with both our health and the digital realm. At Mobile World Congress 2025, the company demonstrated functional prototypes of smart contact lenses that promise to transcend conventional wearable limitations. These nearly invisible computing platforms sit directly on the eye, capable of monitoring glucose levels from tears while simultaneously overlaying digital information onto our natural field of vision. As the boundaries between our physical bodies and computing capabilities continue to blur, these lenses represent more than novel gadgetry—they herald a potential paradigm shift in how we experience consciousness in an increasingly digital world.

The Evolution of Wearable Technology: From Wrist to Eye

The journey of wearable technology has been one of progressive integration with the human body. What began as clunky devices strapped to wrists has evolved into increasingly seamless extensions of ourselves. Fitness trackers and smartwatches represented the first wave of mainstream wearable adoption, collecting data on heart rate, sleep patterns, and physical activity. Yet these devices, while useful, maintained a clear physical and psychological boundary between technology and user.

Smart glasses like Google Glass attempted to bridge this gap but encountered both technical limitations and social resistance. The visible, somewhat obtrusive nature of these devices created a barrier to widespread adoption, despite their innovative approach to augmented reality. Meanwhile, medical technology companies developed specialised wearables for health monitoring, including continuous glucose monitors and cardiac monitoring patches, which brought specific health data collection closer to the body but remained limited in their broader applications.

This historical context makes XPANCEO's recent demonstration at Mobile World Congress 2025 particularly significant. Their smart contact lens prototypes represent the technological culmination of these separate evolutionary branches—merging health monitoring capabilities with augmented reality functions in a form factor that is essentially invisible to outside observers.

"The contact lens represents a uniquely intimate interface with the human body," explains Professor Miranda Chen, a biomedical engineering specialist at Imperial College London (not affiliated with XPANCEO). "It sits directly on the eye, has access to biological fluids through tears, and can theoretically augment our most dominant sense—vision—without any visible technology. It's the closest we've come to truly integrated computing."

The journey to this point has required overcoming formidable technical challenges. Early experimental smart lenses faced issues with power supply, miniaturisation of components, user comfort, and biological compatibility. Previous attempts by major tech companies, including Google's diabetes-monitoring lens project (discontinued in 2018), ran into practical obstacles that seemed insurmountable at the time.

XPANCEO's approach appears to have addressed these historical limitations through a combination of advanced materials science, novel power transmission methods, and micronised sensor technology. Their demonstration of working prototypes suggests that the theoretical barriers that stymied earlier projects may now be falling.

XPANCEO's Technology: What Sets It Apart

The technical achievement underlying XPANCEO's smart contact lenses represents a convergence of multiple cutting-edge technologies, each having overcome significant miniaturisation and integration challenges.

At the core of their innovation is a transparent, flexible display integrated directly into a soft contact lens. Unlike traditional displays that might obstruct vision, XPANCEO has developed what they describe as a "selectively transparent micro-LED array" that can overlay information onto the wearer's natural field of vision without blocking it. This allows for augmented reality capabilities while maintaining normal sight.

The health monitoring functionality represents another technical breakthrough. The lenses feature microsensors capable of analysing tear fluid in real-time, potentially detecting glucose levels, cortisol (a stress hormone), and various metabolites. This non-invasive approach to biomarker monitoring could revolutionise how we track health metrics, particularly for conditions like diabetes that traditionally require blood sampling.

Perhaps most impressive is the power solution. Smart contact lenses face a fundamental challenge: they need power to function but cannot accommodate conventional batteries due to size constraints and safety concerns. XPANCEO's demonstration featured wireless power transmission, potentially using a combination of radio frequency harvesting and near-field communication technologies. This allows the lenses to operate without onboard batteries, drawing power from a companion device like a smartphone or dedicated wearable.

Data processing represents another challenge that XPANCEO appears to have addressed. The limited real estate of a contact lens cannot accommodate sophisticated computing hardware, so the company has likely implemented a hybrid approach where basic data collection and display functions occur on the lens itself, while more complex processing happens on a paired device.

The materials science underpinning these lenses must also be acknowledged. Creating biocompatible, oxygen-permeable materials that can safely house electronics while remaining comfortable for extended wear presents significant challenges. XPANCEO's prototypes suggest advances in this arena as well.

"What we're seeing with these smart contact lenses is not one breakthrough but several concurrent innovations reaching maturity simultaneously," notes Dr. Eliza Whitbridge, a materials scientist specialising in bioelectronics. "The integration of transparent electronics, biocompatible materials, wireless power, and biosensing in such a small form factor represents a remarkable technical achievement."

The company has been relatively guarded about the specific technical details of their implementation, which is understandable given the competitive nature of this emerging field. However, the demonstration of working prototypes at MWC 2025 suggests that whatever technical approach they've taken has progressed beyond theoretical concepts to practical application.

Health Monitoring: The Liquid Interface

One of the most revolutionary aspects of XPANCEO's smart contact lenses lies in their ability to interface directly with tear fluid—a biological sample that contains a wealth of health information yet has traditionally been difficult to monitor continuously.

Tears contain glucose, proteins, electrolytes, and metabolites that can serve as biomarkers for various health conditions. Traditional methods of measuring these compounds typically involve blood draws or other invasive procedures. The prospect of continually monitoring these biomarkers through tears represents a paradigm shift in health tracking.

XPANCEO's vision for health monitoring through their smart lenses is ambitious. According to their MWC 2025 presentation, the company envisions tracking glucose levels for diabetic management, monitoring cortisol levels to quantify stress responses, detecting early markers of eye diseases like glaucoma, and potentially even identifying specific proteins associated with systemic conditions.

The glucose monitoring capability holds particular promise. For the millions of people worldwide living with diabetes, the current standard of care often involves regular finger pricks for blood glucose testing or wearing continuous glucose monitors that require sensor filaments inserted under the skin. A non-invasive alternative that continuously monitors glucose through tears could dramatically improve quality of life while potentially increasing compliance with monitoring regimes.

"The tear film is an underutilised biological fluid for diagnostics," explains Dr. Naomi Watkins, a clinical biochemist specialising in diagnostic technologies. "It contains many of the same biomarkers found in blood but accessing it has traditionally been challenging. A contact lens with integrated sensors essentially solves the collection problem by sitting directly at the source."

Beyond glucose, the stress monitoring potential of these lenses could open new frontiers in mental health and wellness tracking. Cortisol, often called the "stress hormone," fluctuates throughout the day and can be detected in tear fluid. Continuous monitoring of cortisol levels could provide unprecedented insight into how different activities, environments, and interactions affect our physiological stress response.

The technical challenges of making these measurements accurately and reliably should not be underestimated. Tear composition can vary based on environmental factors, emotional state, and even the time of day. Creating sensors that can account for these variables while producing clinically valid measurements represents a significant scientific achievement.

Moreover, the question of calibration and validation remains critical for any health monitoring technology. XPANCEO will need to demonstrate that their lens-based measurements correlate strongly with established clinical testing methods before these devices can be considered reliable for medical decision-making.

Nevertheless, the prospect of invisible, continuous health monitoring through a device as unobtrusive as a contact lens represents a potential turning point in personal health management—one where awareness of our biochemical state becomes as constant and accessible as our awareness of time is today through wristwatches.

Augmented Reality: Vision Reimagined

The second transformative aspect of XPANCEO's smart contact lenses is their augmented reality capability—the ability to overlay digital information directly onto our view of the physical world. While AR has existed for years through smartphones and specialised headsets, integrating this technology into contact lenses would fundamentally change how we interact with digital information.

Unlike bulky AR glasses or headsets, contact lens-based AR would be virtually invisible to others, potentially eliminating the social barriers that have hindered previous AR wearables. More significantly, the information would appear directly in the wearer's natural field of vision, creating a more seamless blend of physical and digital realities.

XPANCEO's demonstration at MWC 2025 showcased several potential applications for this technology. These included navigational aids that could highlight directions without requiring the user to consult a phone; informational overlays that could provide context about objects or people in view; and communication tools that could display notifications or messages directly in the user's visual field.

"What makes contact lens AR particularly compelling is its inherently personal nature," notes Dr. Victor Tran, a researcher specialising in human-computer interaction. "The information is literally for your eyes only, creating possibilities for private augmentation of reality that current AR technologies cannot match."

The technical implementation of AR in a contact lens presents formidable challenges. Traditional AR systems rely on cameras to understand the surrounding environment, processors to determine what information to display, and relatively large displays to present that information. Miniaturising these components to fit within a contact lens while maintaining functionality requires pushing beyond current technological boundaries.

XPANCEO's approach likely involves offloading much of the processing work to a companion device like a smartphone, with the lens itself handling only the display aspect. Even so, creating a display that can effectively overlay information onto normal vision, within the physical constraints of a contact lens, represents a remarkable technical achievement.

The company's preview suggests that their display technology can create both text and simple graphics, though the resolution and complexity appear limited compared to dedicated AR headsets. This limitation is understandable given the form factor constraints but raises questions about the range of potential applications.

Privacy considerations also emerge with this technology. A device that constantly mediates our view of reality—potentially recording what we see or altering it in subtle ways—raises profound questions about digital boundaries and personal agency. XPANCEO has acknowledged these concerns, stating that their approach prioritises user control and transparency, though the full implementation remains to be seen.

Despite these challenges and considerations, the prospect of AR contact lenses represents a significant step toward truly ubiquitous computing—a world where digital information and capabilities are available instantly, constantly, and invisibly. The smartphone revolution put computing in our pockets; smart contact lenses could place it directly in our field of view.

The Competitive Landscape: Racing to the Invisible Interface

XPANCEO is not alone in pursuing the vision of smart contact lenses, though their demonstration of working prototypes at MWC 2025 suggests they may have pulled ahead in what has become an increasingly competitive field.

Major technology companies have long shown interest in this space. Google's parent company Alphabet, through its Verily Life Sciences division, previously worked on smart contact lenses for diabetes monitoring before pausing the project in 2018 due to technical challenges. Apple has filed numerous patents related to AR contact lenses, suggesting ongoing research in this direction. Samsung has similarly published patents describing smart contact lens technology with integrated displays and cameras.

In addition to these tech giants, several specialised companies are focused specifically on smart contact lens development. Mojo Vision, founded in 2015, has been developing AR contact lenses with microLED displays. Though the company has faced financial challenges in recent years, their technical demonstrations have shown promising advances in miniaturised display technology.

InWith Corporation is another player focused on integrating flexible electronics into hydrogel contact lenses, with an emphasis on both vision correction and digital display capabilities. Their partnership with Bausch + Lomb, an established contact lens manufacturer, suggests a strategy focused on leveraging existing industry infrastructure.

What appears to distinguish XPANCEO's approach, based on their MWC demonstration, is the comprehensive integration of both health monitoring and AR capabilities in a single device. While competitors have largely focused on either medical applications or visual display technology, XPANCEO's prototype combines both functions—potentially offering greater value and broader applications.

The regulatory landscape for these devices remains complex and will significantly impact how quickly they reach consumers. Smart contact lenses occupy an unusual position at the intersection of medical device regulation and consumer electronics oversight.

"Any device making health claims, particularly one in direct contact with the body, faces rigorous regulatory scrutiny," explains regulatory affairs specialist Dr. Harriet Chen. "Companies in this space must navigate both medical device regulations and consumer product safety requirements, which can significantly extend development timelines."

Investment in this sector has been substantial despite these challenges. Venture capital and corporate investment in advanced wearable technology has grown steadily, with particular interest in devices that can provide actionable health insights. XPANCEO has reportedly secured significant funding, though exact figures remain private, allowing them to advance their prototypes to their current state.

The intellectual property landscape surrounding smart contact lens technology is increasingly crowded, with thousands of patents filed in areas ranging from flexible electronics to biosensing methods. This patent density suggests both significant commercial interest and potential for future legal challenges as products come to market.

As this competitive race accelerates, strategic partnerships may prove crucial. Established contact lens manufacturers possess the manufacturing infrastructure and regulatory experience to bring products to market at scale, while technology companies offer the necessary electronic and software expertise. XPANCEO's partnerships have not been fully disclosed, but their progress suggests effective collaboration across these domains.

Technical and Practical Challenges

Despite the promising demonstration at MWC 2025, XPANCEO and other companies in this space face significant technical and practical challenges before smart contact lenses can become mainstream products.

Power management remains perhaps the most formidable technical hurdle. While XPANCEO's wireless power solution appears to work in controlled demonstration environments, maintaining reliable power transmission in real-world conditions—where the distance and alignment between power source and lens may constantly change—presents ongoing challenges.

"Wireless power for implantable or wearable devices has been a persistent challenge in bioelectronics," notes power systems engineer Dr. Akira Tanaka. "The fundamental physics of power transmission creates a tradeoff between transmission distance, efficiency, and safety that is difficult to optimise, particularly for devices with strict size constraints."

Data transmission faces similar challenges. The lenses must communicate bidirectionally with external devices to function fully—receiving display instructions and sending health monitoring data. Doing so reliably while consuming minimal power and maintaining user privacy adds layers of complexity.

The biocompatibility of materials used in these lenses requires extensive testing for long-term safety. Any device in direct contact with the eye must demonstrate not only initial comfort but also safety during extended wear. The integration of electronic components within biocompatible materials that remain oxygen-permeable (essential for eye health) requires sophisticated materials engineering.

"The eye is an extraordinarily sensitive organ," explains ophthalmologist Dr. Elena Rivera. "Any contact lens must allow adequate oxygen transmission to the cornea, maintain tear film dynamics, and avoid triggering inflammatory responses. Adding electronics to this equation significantly complicates an already challenging design problem."

The user experience of AR contact lenses presents its own set of challenges. Unlike digital displays we're accustomed to, which exist in a fixed position relative to our field of view, contact lenses move with our eyes. This creates unique challenges for stabilising displayed information and preventing it from becoming disorienting or distracting.

Additionally, the interface paradigm for controlling what information appears and when remains unclear. Traditional input methods like touch, voice, or buttons may not be appropriate for a device that exists literally in the user's eye. XPANCEO has not fully revealed their approach to this interaction design challenge.

Manufacturing scalability represents another significant hurdle. Creating these sophisticated devices at scale, with the precision and reliability needed for both medical and consumer applications, will require advanced manufacturing techniques that may not yet be fully established.

Regulatory approval pathways for devices that combine medical and consumer electronics functions remain somewhat undefined. XPANCEO will likely need to navigate multiple regulatory frameworks, potentially including medical device approval processes in various jurisdictions.

Finally, there are legitimate questions about market readiness for this technology. Contact lenses themselves are not universally adopted—many people find them uncomfortable or impractical compared to glasses. Adding technology to contacts may exacerbate existing barriers to adoption while creating new ones related to cost, maintenance, and perceived invasiveness.

These challenges, while substantial, are not necessarily insurmountable. The history of technology is filled with examples of devices that faced similar hurdles before achieving mainstream adoption. XPANCEO's demonstration suggests progress on many of these fronts, though the journey from working prototype to mass-market product remains considerable.

Ethical and Social Implications

As with many emerging technologies that closely integrate with human biology, smart contact lenses raise significant ethical and social questions that extend beyond technical considerations.

Privacy concerns stand at the forefront of these ethical questions. A device that mediates our view of reality and potentially records what we see creates novel privacy implications for both users and those around them. Unlike smartphones or even smart glasses, contact lenses are virtually undetectable to others, potentially enabling recording or identification technologies without consent or awareness.

"We're entering an era where the boundaries between public and private space are increasingly blurred by technology," notes digital ethics researcher Dr. Sophia Williams. "Smart contact lenses represent an extreme point on this spectrum—technology that is simultaneously deeply personal and potentially invisible to everyone except the wearer."

XPANCEO has stated their commitment to privacy-by-design principles, including local data processing where possible and user control over information collection. However, the implementation details of these commitments remain to be seen, and the history of consumer technology suggests that privacy protections often lag behind technical capabilities.

Questions of digital inequality also emerge when considering technologies that combine health monitoring with augmented reality. If these devices provide significant advantages in accessing information or monitoring chronic conditions, their availability may become an issue of health equity and digital inclusion. The likely high cost of early versions could exacerbate existing healthcare disparities.

There are also considerations around cognitive liberty and attention. A device that can constantly present information in our field of vision raises questions about cognitive load, distraction, and the right to mental privacy. The ability to choose when we engage with digital information—and when we disconnect—may be fundamentally altered by technology that is always present in our visual field.

"The psychology of attention is already being challenged by smartphones and social media," explains cognitive psychologist Dr. Marcus Hendricks. "Smart contact lenses could fundamentally change our relationship with attention by removing the physical barrier between ourselves and digital information. We don't yet understand the long-term cognitive implications of this constant visual augmentation."

Dependency concerns also arise with health monitoring technologies. While continuous health data can enable better management of chronic conditions, it may also create psychological dependency on constant monitoring or trigger anxiety in users who become overly focused on normal physiological fluctuations.

Regulatory frameworks for these devices remain underdeveloped, particularly in addressing their dual nature as both medical devices and consumer electronics. Questions about data ownership, accuracy requirements for health monitoring, and standards for AR information presentation all require careful consideration from policymakers.

XPANCEO and similar companies face the challenge of addressing these ethical concerns while advancing their technology. Their approach to these questions will likely influence both regulatory responses and public acceptance of smart contact lenses.

The Future Vision: Beyond Current Prototypes

While XPANCEO's current prototypes represent a significant technological achievement, they likely represent only the beginning of smart contact lens capabilities. Looking forward, several potential developments could expand their functionality and impact.

Advanced visual augmentation capabilities could progress beyond simple information overlays to more sophisticated interactions with our environment. Future iterations might include full-colour, high-resolution displays capable of rendering complex visual information or even altering our perception of the physical world in more fundamental ways.

"The ultimate vision for AR contact lenses would be true mixed reality, where digital objects appear as solid and present as physical ones," explains AR researcher Dr. Tomas Fernandez. "This would require significant advances in display technology, eye tracking, and environmental understanding, but it represents the logical endpoint of this technological path."

Enhanced biosensing capabilities could expand beyond glucose and cortisol to include a wider array of biomarkers. Future lenses might monitor inflammatory markers, detect specific proteins associated with disease states, or even identify the presence of environmental allergens or pollutants.

Integration with artificial intelligence systems could transform raw biological data into actionable health insights. Rather than simply reporting metrics, smart contact lenses could leverage AI to predict health events before they occur, potentially alerting wearers to impending migraines, anxiety attacks, or blood sugar fluctuations based on subtle patterns in their biomarkers.

Therapeutic applications represent another frontier. Beyond passive monitoring, contact lenses could potentially deliver medications directly to the eye, adjust delivery based on measured biomarkers, or even provide therapeutic light exposure for conditions like seasonal affective disorder.

Computer vision capabilities could be incorporated to provide real-time analysis of the wearer's environment. This might include facial recognition, object identification, or translation of text in foreign languages—all presented seamlessly within the user's field of view.

Interconnection with other devices and systems will likely expand. Future smart contact lenses might communicate with home automation systems, vehicles, or public infrastructure to create seamless interactions between the wearer and their environment.

Neural interface potential, while more speculative, represents a compelling long-term possibility. As brain-computer interface technology advances, contact lenses could potentially serve as a non-invasive bridge between neural activity and digital systems, perhaps by monitoring subtle eye movements or pupil responses that correlate with specific thoughts or intentions.

"The eye represents a unique window into both body and mind," notes neurotechnology specialist Dr. Amara Levy. "Pupillary responses, eye movements, and tear composition can reflect not only physical health but also cognitive and emotional states. A sophisticated contact lens interface could potentially access this information non-invasively."

The timeline for these advancements remains uncertain and will depend on progress in multiple fields, including materials science, power engineering, display technology, and biosensing. Regulatory approaches to these more advanced capabilities will also significantly influence their development and deployment.

What seems clear is that XPANCEO's current prototypes, impressive as they are, likely represent just the first generation of a technology that could evolve in multiple directions, potentially changing our relationship with both our health data and the digital information that increasingly shapes our world.

The Invisible Revolution

XPANCEO's demonstration of functional smart contact lens prototypes at MWC 2025 marks a significant milestone in wearable technology. By integrating health monitoring and augmented reality capabilities into a form factor as unobtrusive as a contact lens, they have pushed forward the boundaries of human-computer integration.

The technical achievements underpinning these devices—from flexible electronics to biosensing capabilities and wireless power transmission—represent the convergence of multiple cutting-edge technologies. While significant challenges remain before these devices reach mainstream adoption, the demonstration of working prototypes suggests that many of the fundamental technical barriers have been overcome.

The implications of this technology extend far beyond gadgetry. Smart contact lenses could fundamentally transform how we monitor health conditions, interact with digital information, and ultimately experience the world around us. The invisible nature of this technology may eliminate many of the social barriers that hindered previous augmented reality devices while creating new questions about privacy, attention, and the boundaries between physical and digital reality.

As XPANCEO and competitors continue to develop this technology, regulatory frameworks, ethical considerations, and user experience design will play crucial roles in determining how smart contact lenses integrate into society. The potential benefits—particularly for those managing chronic health conditions—are substantial, but so too are the challenges of implementing this technology responsibly.

What seems increasingly clear is that the future of wearable technology lies not in devices we carry or wear externally, but in technologies that integrate more seamlessly with our bodies. Smart contact lenses represent perhaps the most intimate and personal form of computing yet developed—technology that doesn't just augment our capabilities but potentially alters our perception of reality itself.

As this technology continues to evolve, it will raise profound questions about what it means to be human in an age where the boundaries between biology and technology, between perception and augmentation, grow increasingly blurred. XPANCEO's smart contact lenses don't just represent a new product category—they herald a potential shift in our relationship with technology that may prove as significant as the smartphone revolution before it.

References and Further Information

Publishing History

About the Author

Tim Green
UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0000-0002-0156-9795
Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Tim Green


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