It sounds like a quote from a science fiction movie, but it's nothing more than a fact that takes place every day in one of the Indian hospitals. Due to the increasing incidence of diabetic retinopathy in India and the lack of qualified eye doctors (there are only 11 eye specialists per million inhabitants in India) a local doctor has established close cooperation with Google and their sister company Verily. Artificial intelligence, supervised straight from California, is to help automate the process of detecting the disease, so more people will get the proper help at the right time. The whole process is still in the testing phase, hence Google provides all the necessary tools completely free. The problem of diabetes is very serious in India, even 70 million citizens are affected. Artificial intelligence, in addition to the detection of the disease itself, is also intended to monitor patients who have already been diagnosed, which has been a big problem so far.
Similar tests have also been carried out by hospitals in the United States, Great Britain and Singapore. The hope for the effectiveness of this system is huge, Verily's technology has been certified and approved for use in Europe last month. However, doctors are quite cautious, technological novelties, especially in the field of medicine, always give rise to some controversy, as they are an alternative to traditional methods, practiced over the years, which doctors are used to. However, this does not change the fact that behind this innovative method are neural networks (similar to those used in face detection systems or instant translation services such as Google Translate), which are based on complex mathematical systems, thanks to which extensive data analysis is able to learn and successfully diagnose the disease. Despite many fears and doubts, experts believe that the system is able to significantly improve the quality of health care, the decisive advantage is the ability to reach a huge number of patients, which is not possible with traditional methods. In the case of diabetic retinopathy, time is a very important element, which is why artificial intelligence from Google may be a great tool in the future in the fight against this disease, not only in India. We keep our fingers crossed and look forward to find out further information in this matter.