Abstract: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) remains a leading cause of irreversible vision loss in adult populations around the globe. Despite growing evidence of the effectiveness of routine assessments and early intervention, DR screening strategies are not widely implemented largely due to an inadequate availability of resources to cope with the growing burden of diabetes. Advances in technology in the field of DR screening are clearly warranted and the recent emergence of deep learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) grading of retinal pathology offers significant potential benefits including an increased efficiency, accessibility and affordability of screening programmes.