Google's ARDA eye-screening AI passes one million patients

Google's Automated Retinal Disease Assessment (ARDA), an AI screening tool for diabetic retinopathy, has now been used on more than a million patients across deployments in India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment in Nature Medicine dated 23 September 2026.

The paper frames the work as "cross-cutting insights that may inform the expansion of healthcare artificial intelligence globally," drawn from three anchor deployments: Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, and Lions Outback Vision at the Lions Eye Institute in Western Australia. The author list mixes Google staff, including Richa Tiwari and Sunny Virmani, with hospital clinicians such as Paisan Ruamviboonsuk at Rajavithi and Angus Turner at Lions Eye. Two researchers on our tracker have posted the link.

Rather than operate the screenings itself, Google routes them through three commercial licensees: Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra. Its own blog post on the licensing arrangement targets six million screenings across India and Thailand within ten years. The Comment's abstract carries no per-site accuracy numbers.