Google ARDA eye AI tops one million patients across three countries

Google's ARDA diabetic retinopathy model has screened over one million patients across three health systems in India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment published in Nature Medicine on September 23, 2026, with lead author Richa Tiwari of Google and co-authors drawn from the three anchor clinical sites.

Those 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 paper is framed not as a model-accuracy study but as a deployment-lessons narrative, offering "cross-cutting insights that may inform the expansion of healthcare artificial intelligence globally."

Rather than running the screening service itself, Google licenses the Automated Retinal Disease Assessment tool to three commercial partners, Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, which run it at no cost to patients. The stated target is six million AI-assisted screenings across India and Thailand within ten years.

No per-site sensitivity, specificity or completed-referral figures appear in the retrieved abstract. Competing-interest disclosures list funding from Alphabet Inc., and co-author Paisan Ruamviboonsuk of Rajavithi Hospital reports consulting work for Roche, Biocon, Abbott, 4DMT and Bayer.