Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the world and the number of people suffering from it is on a rise. There are over 415 million diabetes patients in world out of which 78.3 million people are in South-East Asia. All of these people stand at a risk of getting diabetic retinopathy, a complication arising from diabetes that can eventually lead to blindness if left untreated.

While this condition is severe, what makes India particularly susceptible to the extreme effects of this disease is the lack of availability of eye specialists, which in turn leads to nearly 45 per cent patients suffering vision loss before diagnosis. Google, using AI, is hoping to help Indian doctors detect diabetic retinopathy early.

So how exactly Google is helping

Google has developed an artificial intelligence model that can detect diabetic retinopathy by analyzing the scans of the retinas - the region at the back of the eye - using special cameras. This image is then analysed by Google's machine learning algorithm, which then grades those scans on a five-point scale ranging between no diabetic retinopathy or DR, which can be managed using a combination of diet and medication, to the most severe case, which may need a surgery.

"In 2016, we published a paper in the Journal of American Medical Association showing that this AI system was performing the level of the Generalists Since then we have made improvements to the algorithm, and now it is on par with the specialists," Google product manager Lily Peng said at the company's Solve with AI Conference in Tokyo on July 10.

Google has already piloted this program in two South-East Asian countries -- Thailand and India. In India, Google partnered with Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai and Sankara Eye Hospital in Chennai.

Notably, Aravind Eye Hospital also has 70 satellite clinics located across south India that cater to the people who cannot come to the hospital for routine scans. At these satellite clinics, nurses capture the image of the patients' retinas. These images are then uploaded on to the cloud where Google's ML algorithm works in combination with the specialists to detect and diagnose the disease, which can then be treated based on its severity.

After the success of the pilot project, the company is now hoping to collaborate with other hospitals across the country. "In India, we are scaling deployments at partner hospitals," Peng confirmed.

The writer's travel and stay in Tokyo, Japan have been arranged by Google.