The Refresh Card: New Technology for the Contact Lens Case

Ever been at a friend's house and realized you didn't bring your contact lens case or solution?  Or flying and suffering from the displeasure of horrendously dry contact lenses, but being unable to take them out because your case and solution are in a checked bag?  For a contact lens wearer, life is not always conducive to the items you need to properly care for your lenses.  And every time you stretch those lenses a little longer than comfortable, or you don't store them properly in fresh solution, you are risking infection they may permanently mean the end of your contact lens wearing days (not to mention the chance of permanent blindness!).  Luckily, a group of entrepreneurs out of California have created a product that can solve these contact lens issues without compromising safety.

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The Refresh Card was this year's winner of Duke's Start Up Challenge for good reason.  The idea is so remarkably simple and accessible, it will leave you wondering why it wasn't available sooner.  Contact lenses have been mainstream since the 1970s, but solutions and the contact lens cleaning process have been overwhelmingly the same for at least 20 years.  The Refresh Card is the size of a credit card so that you could even store one or a few in your wallet or purse, but has pop-out compartments that can be manipulated to to make a contact lens case and 2 packets of solution.  All those years playing with Transformers paid off for these entrepreneurs.




Just pop-out the contact lens wells (conveniently marked R and L), clean your lenses with the provided solution packet, and store.  The blue top portion of the card will slide back on to seal your lenses safely overnight. Currently the product is available for pre-order at the company's website, so not yet available for mainstream use.  I had reached out to the company to see what brand of contact lens solution they would be using, but got no answer, so I am surmising that is still in the works.  I will update this post as soon as I learn more details (like projected cost and solution brand to be used).