Apple Watch Blood Oxygen Inaccurate with Darker Skin Class Action

The Apple Watch, made by Apple, Inc. and selling for $400 or more, purports to be able to measure from the wrist the blood oxygen levels of its wearers. But the complaint for this class action alleges that the technology used to do this does not produce an accurate measurement for those with darker skins.

Two classes have been defined for this action:

• The New York Class is all persons in New York who bought the product during the applicable statutes of limitations.
• The Consumer Fraud Multi-State Class is all persons in North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Utah who bought the product during the applicable statutes of limitations.

The first persons to be interested in monitoring blood oxygen levels, the complaint alleges, were hot air balloonists and mountain climbers, who needed this knowledge for survival; later, astronauts, pilots, and divers also wanted to keep track of it.

The first devices, the complaint claims, measured levels at a person’s ear and “used light-based technology or spectrophotometry to measure oxygen levels.”

The 1970s saw the invention of a fingertip oximeter that was easier to use. However, the complaint alleges, “[f]or decades, there have been reports that such devices were significantly less accurate in measuring blood oxygen levels based on skin color.”

According to the complaint, this bias was largely ignored until the Covid-19 pandemic, which “converged with a greater awareness of structural racism which exists in many aspects of society.”

The complaint alleges, “Researchers confirmed the clinical significance of racial bias of pulse oximetry using records of patients taken during and before he pandemic.” It quotes an unnamed source as saying that the conclusion was that “reliance on pulse oximetry to triage patients and adjust supplemental oxygen levels may place Black patients at increased risk for hypoxemia.” This means that white patients have an advantage in health care in terms of the accuracy of the blood oxygen readings delivered.

Fingertip pulse oximeters can measure both blood oxygen and heart rate, the complaint alleges, but only heart rate measurements should be taken at the wrist because blood oxygen readings taken there may be inaccurate.

“Algorithms designed for fingertip sensing are inappropriate when based on wrist measurements,” the complaint claims, “and can lead to over 90% of readings being unusable.”

The complaint thus suggests that the Apple Watch may not accurately detect lower blood oxygen saturation levels in persons of color.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Breach of warranty, Deceptive Advertising, Fraud