Google ARDA eye-screening AI crosses one million patients

Google's ARDA deep learning tool for diabetic eye disease has now screened more than one million patients across India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment in Nature Medicine published on 23 September 2026 by Richa Tiwari of Google and co-authors.

The deployment is anchored at three sites: Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, and Lions Outback Vision at the Lions Eye Institute in Western Australia. Google does not run the screenings itself. It licenses the model, Automated Retinal Disease Assessment, to three commercial partners, Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, which operate the service at no cost to patients.

"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 Comment pairs the reported scale with a stated target of six million AI-assisted screenings across India and Thailand within ten years.

The piece is framed as operational rather than a fresh accuracy study. The abstract publishes no new per-site sensitivity or specificity numbers, and the Comment format sidesteps the controlled design of the group's earlier validation work. Co-author Paisan Ruamviboonsuk of Rajavithi Hospital discloses consulting relationships with Roche, Biocon Biologics, Abbott, 4DMT and Bayer. Primary funding is from Alphabet.

Two researchers on our Who's Who tracker posted the paper the day it went live.