Quelle surprise - garbage in, garbage out. I'll bet my Apple Watch doesn't have these issues.
Apple Watch already had exactly this problem in the past.
Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
11–20 of 124 posts
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#12If I understand it, they looked at 3 pulse ox meters. The expensive one from the company that was sponsoring the study read about one point (out of 100) lower on blacks which is inaccurate but not outrageous. One of the off-brand meters was completely wrong (e.g. dangerous) for blacks, the other one was in between.
They look at a few studies too and asked around companies if they handled the issues mentioned in those studies, the most positive result was that some models from one company are now better)probably some of the others are not).
IMO seems that the certifications for this devices, especially for the ones used by medical stuff to decide things need to be better tested.
Other interesting point that I did not consider is you can have a device with an average error under a safe threshold but that gives a much above average error for some groups putting this groups at risk if the people using this devices are not warned about this issues.
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#13This really isn't a big deal. Doctors know that these pulse ox meters aren't very accurate and use them accordingly. Nobody's changing their plan because you have a pulse ox of 93 instead of 95. They're there to quickly measure big changes that indicate a problem. In other words, they're looking for patients going from 98 to 75, not 98 to 95.
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#14Reminds me of the automatic soap dispenser at Facebook that can't see black people. https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-da...
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#15Reminds me of the automatic soap dispenser at Facebook that can't see black people. https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-da...
I can believe this because automatic doors seem more prone to having a hard time opening when I wear black clothes. It's not a big deal or anything, but I occasionally have to step back and then forth again to get it to open. Is this a common experience of black people, or am I crazy?
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#16I wonder if the pulse oxes in China are calibrated for Chinese skin or White skin? Many people are buying pulse oxes straight off of Alibaba and they might be getting readings that are too low if the calibration is off.
Depends on what you are measuring as well; if you want to know if there is a significant change you can do that. If you want absolute numbers you are probably doing it wrong anyway. (there is no single true template for numbers universally describing what a certain human should be like)
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#17I wonder if the pulse oxes in China are calibrated for Chinese skin or White skin? Many people are buying pulse oxes straight off of Alibaba and they might be getting readings that are too low if the calibration is off.
I’ll be surprised if they are calibrated at all.
Lots of thermometers on Amazon aren’t even FDA cleared so I wouldn’t be surprised if the pulse oximeters aren’t FDA cleared either.
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#18I wonder if the pulse oxes in China are calibrated for Chinese skin or White skin? Many people are buying pulse oxes straight off of Alibaba and they might be getting readings that are too low if the calibration is off.
China is home to a tremendous amount of racial diversity, from the majority Han to Tibetans to the oppressed Uighur. Our western idea that "Asian" is a race is rather flawed. I don't think you can come up with any "typical" Chinese skin color.
FWIW, my wife (Han, who grew up in Shanghai) generally has whiter skin than do I (a generic American of mostly northern European descent).
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#19Can’t they just be wrong , do they need to be biased? Has the english language run out of words except the ones ending in -ist?
While I get being touchy about such a term, I think bias is the proper term here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_(statistics)
I think the quibble may not be with the headline, which just says bias, but with the repeated use of "racial bias" in the article content. That is a somewhat loaded term in these times we are living in. A more neutral write-up might just have observed that the devices seem to have poor quality control and may not be particularly accurate for all skin colors. Caveat emptor and all that, but it is a $25 medical device.
Re: Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin
#20Quelle surprise - garbage in, garbage out. I'll bet my Apple Watch doesn't have these issues.
The Apple Watch doesn't have a pulse oximeter (EDIT: it does have one that is not approved and therefore is disabled), so it would be difficult for it to have this issue. You might be thinking of optical HR measurement, for which sensors have also been shown to have skin color biases in some cases.