Google ARDA retinal AI crosses one million patients screened

Over a million patients have been screened for diabetic eye disease by Google's ARDA model across hospital networks in India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment published 23 September 2026 in Nature Medicine by Richa Tiwari and colleagues at Google, with co-authors from each of the three anchor hospitals.

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

Google does not operate the screenings itself. It licenses ARDA, short for Automated Retinal Disease Assessment, to Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, which run the service at no cost to patients. The partners committed in October 2024 to delivering "six million AI-enabled screenings at no cost to patients over the next ten years."

The Comment is framed as deployment lessons rather than a fresh accuracy study; a prior 2022 Lancet validation of the model reported "94.7% accuracy, matching the performance of community specialists."