Companies get sued by random people for stuff like this all the time, I don't think there's anything here that indicates this is particularly newsworthy or exceptional. This is the same class-action lawyer who sued Kellogs for not putting enough strawberry ingredients into their strawberry poptarts: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/30/1050175655/strawberry-pop-tarts-lawyer-spencer-sheehan-vanilla-lime-food-beverage" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2021/10/30/1050175655/strawberry-pop-tar...</a>. Apparently (according to that NPR article) he files ~3 lawsuits per week
EDIT: This is a known issue w/ all pulse oximeters. See Prof Kadambi @UCLA work on this --> <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fixing-medical-devices-that-are-biased-against-race-or-gender/" rel="nofollow">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fixing-medical-de...</a><p>FDA is aware of this issue. Increasing diversity in clinical trials is a hard problem. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/events/increasingdiversityinclinicaltr6975138914856529920/comments/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/events/increasingdiversityinclinica...</a>
Is this satire? If not, here's some:<p>From a quick search it appears that subcutaneous fat can adversely affect the accuracy of an optical pulse oximeter. It sounds like everyone with a large BMI should get a class action going too.<p>For that matter, I can't believe that the GPS in the Apple Watch, which is marketed as accurate by a trillion dollar company, works worse for people living in dense urban areas. Another clear case of bias against the urban poor while billionaires living on their ranches in Montana with an open view of the sky enjoy perfect GPS.
Race and skin tone seem to be used interchangeably in this complaint. I see "persons of color" and "racial bias" in consecutive claims. If the sensors are biased, they are certainly biased against skin tones rather than races: a light skinned black person will get a better reading than a dark skinned one. That is, it's not that the sensor says "black person detected, shutting down", it's just not as good at picking up darker skin tones because of the limitations of the inexpensive sensor technology they went with. It seems like racial bias is a hot take, but they may have a better case that Apple engaged in false advertising, especially if they showed anyone in their marketing for whom the sensor was unlikely to be accurate.<p>/armchair internet lawyer.
Isn't this a bigger problem involving all pulse oximeters?<p>It was at least two years ago that I first heard that the darker you are, the more likely you will get a false high reading on one.
<a href="https://www.apple.com/healthcare/docs/site/Blood_Oxygen_app_on_Apple_Watch_October_2022.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/healthcare/docs/site/Blood_Oxygen_app_...</a> describes in pretty solid detail that Apple specifically explored skin color and claims they found no effect on performance. If that's actually true then they'll have no trouble showing that the case is invalid. If that's not true then the case seems ok. Either way, I don't see a lot of harm in forcing Apple to show the court.
This is a bunch of nonsense, the complaint itself reads like an 5th grader's English class homework assignment. It's less coherent than ChatGPT and cites no data whatsoever.<p>I'm a mechanical engineer. There is no way that Apple's mechanical team did not evaluate the oximeter performance against people of many skin colors. If this thing goes to trial, Apple will pull out their test data and that will be the end of the case.
I'm curious about the word 'bias' here. From a technical perspective, does the pulse oximetry sensor just have more variance on darker skin (presumably from it being more opaque and signal to noise being worse), or is there an actual bias (e.g. reads high all the time)?
Doesn't the person filing the suit, by the wording of the suit, admit to expecting inaccuracy based on skin color before buying the device?<p>Also, did they sue Garmin and Fitbit similarly? If not, it's kind of a self confessed money grab attempt in full daylight.
Maybe we can require people take selfies in sunlight with a known camera sensor and white balance and exposure to accurately gauge their natural skin color, then have a corrective calibration factor sent to the watch's oximeter.
The complaint is also available at <a href="https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.nysd.591590" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.nysd.591590</a> - the pdf is <a href="https://ia601507.us.archive.org/26/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.591590/gov.uscourts.nysd.591590.1.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ia601507.us.archive.org/26/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.5...</a><p>The initial part of the complaint:<p>1. Apple, Inc. (“Defendant”) manufactures, markets, and sells the Apple Watch, purporting to measure the oxygen level of a wearer’s blood directly from their wrist (“Product”).<p>2. The interest in blood oxygen levels extends began at least two hundred years ago hot air balloon flyers and mountain climbers needed to ensure survival.<p>3. Later, these groups included astronauts, pilots and divers.<p>4. The early devices, were used in a person’s ear, used light-based technology or
spectrophotometry to measure oxygen levels.<p>5. In the 1970s, a fingertip oximeter was invented that was easier to use than its predecessors.<p>6. For decades, there have been reports that such devices were significantly less accurate in measuring blood oxygen levels based on skin color.<p>7. The “real world significance” of this bias lay unaddressed until the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic, which converged with a greater awareness of structural racism which exists in many aspects of society.<p>8. Researchers confirmed the clinical significance of racial bias of pulse oximetry using records of patients taken during and before the pandemic.<p>9. 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.”<p>10. Since health care recommendations are based on readings of their blood oxygen levels, white patients are more able to obtain care than those with darker skin when faced with equally low blood oxygenation.<p>11. While traditional fingertip pulse oximeters are capable of measuring blood oxygen levels and heart rate, wrist-worn devices like the Product determine heart rate, as blood oxygen measurements from the wrist are believed inaccurate.<p>12. Algorithms designed for fingertip sensing are inappropriate when based on wrist measurements, and can lead to over 90% of readings being unusable.<p>13. Though one recent study concluded the Product was able to detect reduced blood oxygen saturation in comparison to medical-grade pulse oximeters this fails to recognize the failings of pulse oximetry in general with respect to persons of color.<p>14. As a result of the false and misleading representations, the Product is sold at a premium price, approximately no less than $400, excluding tax and sales.
I expect that similar lawsuits will be filed against other smart watch vendors such as Garmin. They all use oximeters that work in essentially the same way. (I am not making any claim about the legal merits of this case.)
Pulse Ox on watches is just a dumb feature. There's really no reason to measure that throughout the day and it kills battery almost as fast as gps.