Google ARDA eye-AI passes one million patients screened

Google's diabetic retinopathy screening tool ARDA has now been used on over a million patients across three health systems in India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment published in Nature Medicine on 23 September 2026.

The three anchor sites are the Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, and Lions Outback Vision at the Lions Eye Institute in Western Australia. The authors, Richa Tiwari, Rajroshan Sawhney and Kasumi Widner from Google, writing with clinicians at each site including Paisan Ruamviboonsuk at Rajavithi and Angus Turner at Lions Eye, frame the piece as a lessons narrative rather than a fresh accuracy study.

'Scaling a successful deep learning tool across three highly distinct settings…offers cross-cutting insights that may inform the expansion of healthcare artificial intelligence globally,' the authors write.

The business shape matters as much as the model. Google licenses the Automated Retinal Disease Assessment to three commercial operators, Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, and is targeting six million AI-assisted screenings across India and Thailand within ten years. Screenings are provided at no cost to patients.

Two researchers in our tracker surfaced the piece after it ran.