Medical device makers and scientists are working on new technologies to improve widely-used devices that assess potential heart and respiratory problems given mounting evidence that current ones could lead to inadequate healthcare for patients with darker skin.
Doctors have long known that pulse oximeters are less accurate in estimating blood oxygen levels in non-white patients, but the discrepancies were considered insignificant. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed some of the real dangers of these flaws, as the devices gave falsely high oxygen readings in patients with dark skin.