Contact lens technology to 2020 and beyond: a review of recent patent literature.

Contact lenses have been a common means of vision correction for more than half a century. Recent developments raise the possibility that the next several years will see the range of applications in which they are used broaden considerably, with an associated expansion in both the number and type of individuals who consider them to be a valuable option. To describe this new landscape, a review of recent patent submissions covering the period 1 January 2014 to 1 February 2017 was undertaken. The results show that in the main, areas where contact lenses will be applied include drug delivery, visual augmentation and biosensing.