nature.com web signal

Google's ARDA eye AI passes one million patients screened

By Published Updated

TL;DR

  • Google's Automated Retinal Disease Assessment has screened over one million patients for diabetic retinopathy across India, Thailand and Australia.
  • Google does not run the service itself; it licenses the model to Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, who deploy it at three anchor hospitals.
  • The authors set a target of six million AI-supported screenings across India and Thailand within ten years, up from 600,000 globally in October 2024.

More than one million patients have been screened for diabetic retinopathy using Google's Automated Retinal Disease Assessment across sites in India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment published in Nature Medicine on 23 September 2026.

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

The authors, led by Richa Tiwari of Google, with Paisan Ruamviboonsuk of Rajavithi Hospital and Angus Turner of the Lions Eye Institute, write that "scaling a successful deep learning tool across three highly distinct settings—in India, Thailand and Australia—offers cross-cutting insights that may inform the expansion of healthcare artificial intelligence globally."

The target they set is six million AI-supported screenings across India and Thailand within ten years, up from more than 600,000 globally as of October 2024.

Shared on Bluesky by 2 AI experts

Originally reported by nature.com

Read the original article →

Original headline: Practical lessons in the global scaling of clinical AI: from one hospital to over a million patients screened - Nature Medicine