Google Launches AI Project To Screen For Diabetic Eye Disease

This week, search giant Google has launched an artificial intelligence project in Thailand to screen for a diabetic eye disease which causes permanent blindness. This all-new AI project analyses patients’ eye screen results and lets them know if they are at a vision loss risk and whether they need to have a preemptive treatment.

According to a Google blog post, there are over 400 million people in the world who has diabetes and a third of them have diabetic retinopathy, which causes permanent blindness. And talking about Thailand, there are only about 1,400 eye doctors for approximately five million diabetics.A few years ago, Google worked with eye doctors in India on an AI project to help doctors analyze images of the back of the eye for signs of diabetic retinopathy and this Thailand AI program by the search giant follows the similar Google project. Also, it highlights a great push by big tech companies to show the benefits that AI can bring to society.

“As a society, we have a responsibility to use AI in the best possible way,” said Kent Walker, Google’s Senior Vice President for Global Affairs, at a Google event in Bangkok on Thursday.

Furthermore, the project was done in collaboration with a Thai state-run Rajavithi Hospital. According to the joint study that Google and the hospital carried out when it comes to detecting disease, the accuracy rate of the AI is 95 per cent while the accuracy of opticians or eye doctors is 74%.