Special Series: Racial Bias and Pulse Oximeters Part 3—Fixing Pulse Oximeters

Public Health On Call

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About this episode:

Pulse oximeters—devices used to read blood oxygen levels in hospitals and at home—are far less reliable for people with darker skin tones. Falsely normal readings create the potential for clinical staff to miss life-threatening conditions.

In this three-episode special series, we explore a longstanding issue that only caught the nation’s attention in recent years. In episode 3: How engineers are working to improve the design of pulse oximeters, and how advocates from across the medical industry including patients and students are leading efforts to keep the pressure on to improve equity in pulse oximetry…and beyond.

Listen to Part 1: A Problem Hiding in Plain Sight.

Listen to Part 2: What Went Wrong?

View the transcript for this episode.

Host:

Annalies Winny is a co-producer of the Pulse Ox series for the Public Health On Call podcast, an associate editor for Global Health NOW, and a contributor for the Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health magazine.

Show links and related content:

The Problem with Pulse Oximeters: A Long History of Racial Bias
Right2Breathe.org
US race-neutral lung assessments to have profound effects, study finds—Reuters
Why more than 14,000 Black kidney transplant patients are moving up on the waitlist–NPR
COVID-19 made pulse oximeters ubiquitous. Engineers are fixing their racial bias.—NPR
Innovative technology to eliminate the racial bias in non-invasive, point-of-core (POC) haemoglobin and pulse oximetry measurements—BMJ
Roots Community Health Center Sues to Halt Sales of Flawed Pulse Oximeters—Roots Community Health Center press release (PDF)
Racial Bias in Medicine Episode 1: Disparities with Pulse Oximeters.—Joel Bervell (YouTube)

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