Google ARDA tops one million diabetic eye screens globally

More than one million patients have now been screened for diabetic eye disease using Google's deep learning tool across India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment in Nature Medicine published 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 tool is Google's Automated Retinal Disease Assessment, or ARDA. Google does not run the screening itself. It licenses the model to Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, which deliver the service at no cost to patients.

"Scaling a successful deep learning tool across three highly distinct settings – in India, Thailand and Australia," the authors write, "offers cross-cutting insights that may inform the expansion of healthcare artificial intelligence globally." Lead author Richa Tiwari is at Google. Co-authors include Paisan Ruamviboonsuk at Rajavithi Hospital and Angus Turner at the Lions Eye Institute.

The paper sets a target of six million AI-supported screenings across India and Thailand within a decade. Two of the researchers we follow posted the Nature Medicine link after it dropped.

The Comment publishes no per-site detection or referral figures in the abstract; the full methodology sits behind the journal's paywall.