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Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

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Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#41

Post by hedgehog »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #30

I'm curious about the word 'bias' here. From a technical perspective, does the pulse oximetry sensor just have more variance on darker skin (presumably from it being more opaque and signal to noise being worse), or is there an actual bias (e.g. reads high all the time)?

Lower overall return of light which causes low SNR, how that manifests is a software question. I've worked on similar systems and read some of the papers about the pulse ox problems, the problem is pretty well known for the finger clip style devices. Watches are harder because the fit to wrist is unreliable and there is muscle and bone right under the skin. In my experience (pretty pale skin) the data quality from the Apple Watch is poor but good enough for rough trending over weeks.

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#42

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

nerdponx wrote: post #10
shagie wrote: post #4

The complaint is also available at https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.nysd.591590 - the pdf is https://ia601507.us.archive.org/26/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.5... The initial part of the complaint: 1. Apple, Inc. (“Defendant”) manufactures, markets, and sells the Apple Watch, purporting to measure the oxygen level of a wearer’s blood directly from their wrist (“Product”). 2. The interest in blood oxygen levels exte…

This seems like an attempt to hold up Apple as some kind of proxy for the medical industry. I'm not sure what they hope to get out of this, other than raising awareness of a long-standing problem with pulse oximeters and dark skin (I certainly didn't know about it before now).

I think in order to bring a lawsuit you have to actually have a relationship with the particular company. So it would take someone who bought a thing to sue over it failing to uphold its claims. If the suit against Apple for the Apple Watch works, I would absolutely expect other vendors to follow.

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#43

Post by itsyaboi »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #32
Teever wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel they should have a disclaimer about it being harder to take picture of dark skinned people in many settings with their cameras as well? Did you actually read the ToS or EULA?

There are slightly different rules for health devices than for leisure ones. If the problem is real, then it seems reasonable to me for Apple (and everyone else, just to be clear) to be made to amend their printed materials to properly disclose well-known-to-Apple problems with oximetry in darker skin. Again, if the problem is real, then they guy deserves a refund, fees covered, maybe a small token for the effort, an…

Is "health device" to medical device as homeopathy is to actual medicine?

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#44

Post by melony »

seanw444 wrote: post #33
nightpool wrote: post #24

Companies get sued by random people for stuff like this all the time, I don't think there's anything here that indicates this is particularly newsworthy or exceptional. This is the same class-action lawyer who sued Kellogs for not putting enough strawberry ingredients into their strawberry poptarts: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/30/1050175655/strawberry-pop-tar... . Apparently (according to that NPR article) he files ~…

I can't imagine spending my whole life filing bullshit lawsuits.

There needs to be Slapp for frivolous trolls like him.

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#45

Post by jvolkman »

yrnameer wrote: post #38
javajosh wrote: post #14

All photography and lighting equipment is racially biased.

You joke but there was a keynote where they (or maybe another tech brand.. can't remember) debuted their new special camera AI that was less discriminatory against black faces (by underexposing them of course). Here's a link to something in the same vein https://www.wired.com/story/can-apples-iphone-x-beat-facial-...

It was Google. https://blog.google/products/pixel/image-equity-real-tone-pi...

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#46

Post by Cerium »

seanw444 wrote: post #33
nightpool wrote: post #24

Companies get sued by random people for stuff like this all the time, I don't think there's anything here that indicates this is particularly newsworthy or exceptional. This is the same class-action lawyer who sued Kellogs for not putting enough strawberry ingredients into their strawberry poptarts: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/30/1050175655/strawberry-pop-tar... . Apparently (according to that NPR article) he files ~…

I can't imagine spending my whole life filing bullshit lawsuits.

Scott Johnson manages all right. [1][2][3] At least he got caught on tax fraud. [4]

[1]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/06/san-jose-falafels-dri... [2]: https://abc7news.com/san-jose-time-deli-close-to-sued/221143... [3]: https://www.siliconvalley.com/2021/08/17/attorney-sues-dozen... [4]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/sacramento-attorney-and...

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#47

Post by bfgoodrich »

mjhay wrote: post #13
dainiusse wrote: post #7

This is absurd...

It's marketed as being accurate. It's not for large segments of the population. This is clearly a serious problem (and with all pulse oximeters). How is that absurd?

The Apple Watch oximeter functionality -- basically a pretty silly gimmick -- is explicitly marketed as “not intended for medical use” and “only designed for general fitness and wellness purposes.” The problems that optical oximeters have with darker skin is well known, painfully obvious, and a basic reality of physics.

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#48

Post by Invictus0 »

This is a bunch of nonsense, the complaint itself reads like an 5th grader's English class homework assignment. It's less coherent than ChatGPT and cites no data whatsoever.

I'm a mechanical engineer. There is no way that Apple's mechanical team did not evaluate the oximeter performance against people of many skin colors. If this thing goes to trial, Apple will pull out their test data and that will be the end of the case.

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#49

Post by nradov »

jld89 wrote: post #19

What is even the point of measuring this at all times????

For healthy people in normal conditions it's rather pointless. Continuous monitoring can be useful for patients with known or suspected pulmonary conditions, such as emphysema, COVID-19, or pneumonia. Monitoring during sleep can be useful for diagnosing sleep apnea. There is also an edge case for high altitude mountaineering and flying in unpressurized aircraft where hypoxia can be an issue.

Re: Apple Sued Alleging Racial Bias Against Minorities on Watch's Blood Oximeter

#50

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

Is this satire? If not, here's some:

From a quick search it appears that subcutaneous fat can adversely affect the accuracy of an optical pulse oximeter. It sounds like everyone with a large BMI should get a class action going too.

For that matter, I can't believe that the GPS in the Apple Watch, which is marketed as accurate by a trillion dollar company, works worse for people living in dense urban areas. Another clear case of bias against the urban poor while billionaires living on their ranches in Montana with an open view of the sky enjoy perfect GPS.

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