Google's ARDA retinal AI tops one million patients screened

Google's diabetic retinopathy screening model has been run on more than one million patients across clinics in India, Thailand and Australia, according to a Comment in Nature Medicine published on 23 September 2026 by a team led by Google's Richa Tiwari.

The tool, Automated Retinal Disease Assessment or ARDA, is anchored at three sites: the Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, and Lions Outback Vision at the Lions Eye Institute in Western Australia. Google does not operate the service itself. It licenses ARDA to three commercial operators, Forus Health, AuroLab and Perceptra, which "run the screening at no cost to patients."

The paper is pitched as a deployment-lessons piece rather than a model paper. 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." Clinical co-authors include Paisan Ruamviboonsuk of Rajavithi Hospital and Angus Turner of the Lions Eye Institute.

The target is larger. Google has stated an aim of six million AI-assisted screenings across India and Thailand within ten years, up from more than 600,000 reported in October 2024.