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| UK begins medical device bias screening |
Sajid ordered Javid to test whether the medical device was effective, regardless of the patient's gender. Britain's health minister has announced that she has launched a review of racial and gender bias in medical devices.
The comment came from reports that blood oxygen monitors do not work well in people with darker skin.
The minister told the BBC that he believed that because of these differences, some ethnic minorities could die during the coronavirus pandemic.
He also said that these differences may lead to higher overall mortality rates among blacks in Britons and South Asians.
Javid wrote in the Sunday Times that the possibility that accidental stigma could lead to ill health is unacceptable.
Studies have shown that oximeters can increase oxygen levels in the blood of minority ethnic groups.
Ministers want to know if stigma prevents patients from receiving appropriate Covid treatment.
The British Medical Association Medical Association said the review should not focus solely on equipment. There are also structural problems in health care for ethnic minorities.
There is evidence that ethnic minorities are more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 during the pandemic.
A study published last year showed that blacks are twice as likely to be infected with the coronavirus than whites.
Although studies have shown that Asians are 1.5 times more likely to be infected than whites.
The reason for this is that many of these medical devices, even some medicines, and some procedures are mainly concentrated in white-majority countries, the minister said. I think it's a methodological problem.
Preliminary results of the bias review will be released in late January
Doctor. Michael Sjoding of the University of Michigan conducted a study on the racial bias underlying pulse oximeters and described the significant difference in device accuracy when used on dark-skinned patients. But it has clinical implications.
"The study found that the accuracy of the device was at least two or even three times that of black patients," he said. In the near future, clinicians should be aware of the limitations of oximetry devices and use them with caution without regard to other information.
But in the long term, he said, the device will have to be re-engineered to work the same way for all patients. He called on governments around the world to set new standards for regulating and evaluating the effectiveness of medical devices.
The examination takes into account the deviations of all medical devices, not just pulse oximeters. Both gender and racial biases are evaluated.
Javid did not specifically talk about medical algorithms. However, they are more likely to be taken up because they are generally regulated as medical devices in the US and UK.
In recent years, expert analysis of algorithms has shown that they are often designed to reproduce racial bias.