It's a small-scale deployment, but it could be vital in the country. India has a severe shortfall of eye doctors (about 100,00), Verily said, and only 6 million of the country's 72 million diabetics ever receive screening. This would reduce the workload on eye clinics and help them screen more people.

You could see expansion elsewhere in the future. Verily's algorithm just recently received a mark greenlighting the use of its AI algorithm in Europe, and the firm plans to expand its work "globally." It wants to be a mainstay of medical tech, and the India rollout is just a starting point.