TV’s Saira Khan on safe home monitoring

The main way of safely monitoring at home is via oximeters, that read the amount of oxygen in the blood. However, it has been found that these are less accurate on people with darker skin. NHS England and medicines regulator, the MHRA, say pulse oximeters may sometimes overestimate oxygen levels. This is because devices beam light through the blood, and skin pigmentation may affect how light is absorbed, they say.

Sajid Javid recently launched a racial bias review amid fears that thousands of ethnic-minority patients died of Covid-19 who should have survived stating “Medical devices ‘made for white people’ may have driven higher minority fatality rates”. He is campaigning for new international standards to ensure that medical devices have been tested on all races before they are allowed to be sold.

Aston spoke to TV personality Saira Khan.