Could Self-Focusing Glasses Soon be the Answer for Presbyopia Sufferers?

Towards a world of presbyopics

Over time, the eye progressively loses its ability to focus, which creates difficulties seeing objects close to you. This means that after the age of 40, even reading a simple magazine often needs to be done at arm’s length. The younger generation might laugh, but not for long: there’s no escaping presbyopia, it affects all of us. Optical start-up Morrow Optics might just have a solution however, with a new concept for self-focusing glasses that can focus in seconds.

Morrow Optics at the cutting edge

Jelle De Smet and Paul Marchal (former director of Imec, a Belgian research institute specializing in nanotechnology) are behind the innovative new idea. Their start-up, Morrow Optics, has created a “pair of active glassesthat imitates the eye’s natural functionality, meaning that sufferers no longer have to juggle different pairs of spectacles,” explains Paul Marchal. And as progressive lens wearers know well, having to use a separate pair of reading glasses is not ideal.

How do self-focusing lenses work?

At first glance, Morrow Optics glasses look like any others. But look more closely and they are equipped with nanotechnology hidden in the arms, that can switch on and off a correction for presbyopia at a touch. “Our approach is all about integrating an active, nanotechnology-based element into the lens, which means that the lens can be adjusted for different situations,” explains Morrow Optics CTO, Jelle Desmet.

Available from late 2019

Although it’s a well-developed concept that has already attracted plenty of investor interest (Morrow Optics has raised €10.4 million to date), these glasses of the future are not yet on the market. If you’re interested you’ll have to be patient, as for the moment, Morrow Optics is still researching partnerships with independent opticians. EYESEEmag will be back with the details as soon as the intelligent glasses are available for a test-drive.