MIT Technology Review February 9, 2024
Devices that measure oxygen levels in the blood don’t work as well in people with dark skin. Researchers want to change that.
Visit any health-care facility, and one of the first things they’ll do is clip a pulse oximeter to your finger. These devices, which track heart rate and blood oxygen, offer vital information about a person’s health. But they’re also flawed. For people with dark skin, pulse oximeters can overestimate just how much oxygen their blood is carrying. That means that a person with dangerously low oxygen levels might seem, according to the pulse oximeter, fine.
The US Food and Drug Administration is still trying to figure out what to do about this problem. Last week, an FDA advisory...
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Topics: Medical Devices