Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, Kimani Toussant’s wife, an epidemiologist, brought him an article about how pulse oximeters appeared to be less accurate in people with darker skin. The small ...

In this article, we discuss the problem that racial bias in pulse oximetry poses, the pressure on the FDA to address that bias, and the prospects for its near-term resolution. On November 1, 2023, a ...

Pulse oximetry is a tool that provides clinical guidance. When physicians are aware of the limitations of their tools, they modify their behavior – witness the many instances where a more accurate and ...

Acknowledging the disparity in pulse oximetry implicates a $2 billion industry that has faced stricter regulations in recent years in an attempt to address bias in the development and testing of these ...

Tiffany Kinyua is a psychology major with a minor in biology and she is a 2025-26 health care ethics intern at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Views are her own.

A major UK study shows that commonly used home pulse oximeters can overestimate oxygen levels in people with darker skin, increasing the risk of undetected hypoxemia and raising urgent questions about ...