Google's ARDA diabetic retinopathy AI passes million patients

Over one million patients have now been screened for diabetic retinopathy using Google's deep-learning tool, according to a Comment in Nature Medicine published 23 September 2026 by authors from Google and partner sites in India, Thailand and Australia.

The three anchor sites are Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, and Lions Outback Vision at the Lions Eye Institute in Western Australia. The paper's own framing is modest: it "offers cross-cutting insights that may inform the expansion of healthcare artificial intelligence globally," from what began as a single-hospital deployment.

Google is not running the screening itself. It has licensed the model — sold commercially as ARDA — to three operators: Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, with a stated target of "a combined 6 million AI-supported screenings to resource-constrained communities at no cost to patients" over the next 10 years. In an October 2024 update Google put the running total at "more than 600,000 screenings in clinics around the world"; the new paper puts it past a million. Two researchers on our tracker shared the piece the day it went live.

What this is, and isn't: it is a Comment, not a peer-reviewed clinical study, and the abstract published does not disclose per-site sensitivity, specificity, referral rates or grader concordance across the three geographies. The named clinician authors include Kim Ramasamy and Ravindran Padmanabhan at the Aravind Medical Research Foundation, Paisan Ruamviboonsuk at Rajavithi Hospital, and Angus Turner at the Lions Eye Institute.