Google has put on display a prototype of a contact lens that could be used by diabetics to monitor their disease.

The lens contains a miniaturized glucose sensor and wireless chip.  The lens would continually monitor glucose levels in tears and report the information to a computer or smartphone.

Google says the lens will be a lot less intrusive for measuring glucose levels than pricking fingers for blood tests.

“We wondered if miniaturized electronics — think chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair — might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy,” Google said in its press release.  “We hope a tiny, super sensitive glucose sensor embedded in a contact lens could be the first step in showing how to measure glucose through tears, which in the past has only been theoretically possible.”

The unit is reportedly powered by radio waves.