Dynamic clarity

It’s time to buckle up our seat belts. We’re on the cusp of huge technological change in the way that we interface with people and with information, says Anthony ‘Tony’ Van Heugten.

“It used to be that we would look at big screens, but what’s about to hit us – and it’s started now – is that we’ll be able to see everything in our glasses,” the CTO of eVision Optics, tells The CEO Magazine.

So we’ll no longer be glued to staring down at our phones, but we won’t have to put a ‘great big’ device on our heads either, he says. That’s because, thanks to the know-how of people like Van Heugten, the heavy, power-consuming technology once needed has been shrunk into what he describes as tiny, light devices that can be incorporated into lenses.

The technology shift might not be in full view of the average person, but Van Heugten points to the signs already in the market, if you know where to look. These include the September 2024 announcement of a long-term partnership between Meta and EssilorLuxottica to develop smart eyewear products, and Apple’s teasing of its yet-to-be-released Glasses product.

eVision Optics’ intellectual properties (IP) in the space fit a critical piece of the vision puzzle.

“Our optics allow the eye to change focus to see what it is that these devices – the augmented reality, the virtual reality, the contact lenses, the glasses – are designed to make them see,” he explains.

At the push of a button

Already, the company’s technology platform of electronic lenses is powering a variety of innovations across a wide breadth of industries, all under strict non-disclosure agreements that prohibit Van Heugten from discussing specifics. But he does say that what’s in the glasses is only a small part of it.

To enable such a shift in focus requires an intricate network of electronics.

“We are also spending considerable effort putting the technology in the frames to make these lenses work,” Van Heugten says.

Other uses they are focused on include military applications for night vision.

“We’re building a device where the soldier doesn’t have to take their hands off the helicopter stick, for example, to reach up and change focus of the night vision,” he reveals. “Instead, they can just push a little button on their yoke.”

There are medical uses as well, such as a patient-driven joystick to allow final focus tweaks during phoropter testing at the opticians, and endoscopes with built-in focus change. There’s even a very futuristic product in the works to allow people who wear contact lenses to adjust the focus of their lenses via a small remote control.

“That’s a reality in our labs now,” Van Heugten says.

The matter behind eVision Optics’ lenses is liquid crystal: “The same stuff that’s in the screen that you’re looking at right now,” he adds.

“In your display, liquid crystal changes the colors, but there are people who figured out that you can also use it to change focus, and that’s what we are harnessing.”

Van Heugten and his team are also working on using liquid crystal to tint contact lenses.

“Instead of just changing the focus, you can also change the amount of light that’s coming through so you can dim it,” he explains. “Another innovation that we’re working on is being able to project images into your eye that are sourced in your contact lenses.”

He’s the last person that needs to be told how hard it is to invent something – and also how easy it is for someone else to knock off an idea in an instant if an idea isn’t protected by patents and IP.

For those players in the augmented virtual and mixed reality space, eVision Optics supplies both the technology ­– “the critical piece that they need that’s light enough and consumes very little power” – and the patent.

Hall of fame

Van Heugten says that he has been curious since his childhood. “I was always making something,” he reflects.

At the age of nine, when most children are still mastering LEGO, Van Heugten had built a toy on which you could stick one wire on a question and another on a potential answer and, if you were right, a light would come on. So ingenious was the young Van Heugten’s invention that a friend offered to buy it – for 10 cents.

“That was the first thing that I ever made money on,” he says with a laugh.

In 2024, he was inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame with, to date, 61 United States patents to his name. Van Heugten’s innovations in electronic liquid crystal lens, ophthalmic diagnostic devices, eye surgery instruments and next-generation human vision correction have contributed to this accolade.

Of the many medical devices he has developed, he says his favorite is a surgical microscope that incorporates a miniaturized wavefront sensor.

“That meant the surgeon was able to monitor optic activity in the eye in real time and make decisions during surgery accordingly,” he explains.

The device was purchased by Alcon and has now been used on millions of patients.

“It feels great to know that I’ve contributed to three million eyes having a better surgical outcome,” he says, adding that he’s also proud that it has inspired further innovation in the space.

The first part of his career was spent working in industrial automation. But when he was asked to sit in on an eye surgery, he knew that was it. “I had found my calling,” he says.

He joined eVision Optics in 2007.

The next generation

Based in Sarasota, Florida, the eVision Optics team is small, yet given the nature of their work, Van Heugten says there’s also a network of another 30 or so people they can reach out to when there’s a highly specialized problem to solve.

And in the next 12–18 months, he is shifting some of his focus to nurturing the next generation of talent in the business.

“Every company goes through a stage where you innovate and you need a particular type of person that can create in the lab. Then you reach a point where you have to find other talent to keep it going. That’s what we’re doing now,” he says.

“We’re giving them more responsibility and more autonomy to help them be successful so that they can bring eVision to that next phase.”