Google ARDA eye AI tops a million patients in three countries

Google's ARDA diabetic retinopathy screening model has crossed one million patients across three partner sites in India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment published in Nature Medicine on 23 September 2026 by a Google-led team writing with clinicians at each hospital.

The anchoring sites are Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, and Lions Outback Vision at the Lions Eye Institute in Western Australia, three settings the authors call "highly distinct." Google licenses ARDA to Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, which run the screening at no cost to patients. Named co-authors include Richa Tiwari of Google, Paisan Ruamviboonsuk of Rajavithi Hospital, and Angus Turner of Lions Outback Vision; two researchers we follow had posted the paper by the time this went out.

The piece is framed as a lessons-learned Comment, not a trial result. Its stated contribution is "cross-cutting insights that may inform the expansion of healthcare artificial intelligence globally," and the authors flag a target of six million AI-supported screenings across India and Thailand within a decade. The Comment publishes no per-site accuracy or referral numbers.