Apple Watch sensor has racial bias, claims new lawsuit
A new class action lawsuit against Apple alleges that the Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor is racially biased against people with dark skin tones.
Blood oxygen sensor
Plaintiff Alex Morales says he purchased an Apple Watch between 2020 and 2021. He says that he was aware that the device has pulse oximetry features, and believed it did this without regard to skin tone.
"For decades, there have been reports that such devices were significantly less accurate in measuring blood oxygen levels based on skin color," the lawsuit alleges. "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."
The lawsuit also claims that researchers "confirmed the clinical significance of racial bias of pulse oximetry using records of patients taken during and before the pandemic."
As a result, "reliance on pulse oximetry to triage patients and adjust supplemental oxygen levels may place Black patients at increased risk for hypoxemia."
Morales filed the lawsuit on December 24 on behalf of all New York consumers who bought an Apple Watch during the statutes of limitations. He also sued on behalf of residents in Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming under those states' consumer fraud laws.
The lawsuit also accuses Apple of breaches of express warranty, fraud, and unjust enrichment, claiming violations of New York General Business Law and State Consumer Fraud Acts.
"Subject pools included a wide range of skin types and tones to ensure that the sensor platform can accommodate the full range of users and maintain accuracy," says the white paper. "At the wavelengths that Apple Watch uses, melanin is a strong light absorber -- particularly in the green and red part of the spectrum -- potentially making PPG measurements more difficult in users with darker skin tones."
"To account for this," it continues, "the Apple Watch sensing platform senses the amount of detected light signals, and it automatically adjusts the LED current (and hence the light output), photodiode gain (sensitivity to light), and sampling rate to ensure adequate signal resolution across the range of human skin tones."
Apple confirmed the issue in May 2015. "Permanent or temporary changes to your skin, such as some tattoos, can also impact heart rate sensor performance, read an updated support page. "The ink, pattern, and saturation of some tattoos can block light from the sensor, making it difficult to get reliable readings."
Those issues happened before the addition of the blood oxygen sensor, which Apple added to the product line with the Apple Watch Series 6 in 2020.
Updated December 29, 2022, 11:40 ET added additional context.
Read on AppleInsider
Blood oxygen sensor
Plaintiff Alex Morales says he purchased an Apple Watch between 2020 and 2021. He says that he was aware that the device has pulse oximetry features, and believed it did this without regard to skin tone.
"For decades, there have been reports that such devices were significantly less accurate in measuring blood oxygen levels based on skin color," the lawsuit alleges. "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."
The lawsuit also claims that researchers "confirmed the clinical significance of racial bias of pulse oximetry using records of patients taken during and before the pandemic."
As a result, "reliance on pulse oximetry to triage patients and adjust supplemental oxygen levels may place Black patients at increased risk for hypoxemia."
Morales filed the lawsuit on December 24 on behalf of all New York consumers who bought an Apple Watch during the statutes of limitations. He also sued on behalf of residents in Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming under those states' consumer fraud laws.
The lawsuit also accuses Apple of breaches of express warranty, fraud, and unjust enrichment, claiming violations of New York General Business Law and State Consumer Fraud Acts.
Apple Watch skin awareness
Apple has not commented on the lawsuit, however in October 2022 it published a white paper that included details about skin tone and the bloody oxygen app. The paper also specifies that the company had tested the app on "many hundreds of participants... [ranging] from ages 19 to 40... split evenly by biological sex, and covering a wide range of skin tones.""Subject pools included a wide range of skin types and tones to ensure that the sensor platform can accommodate the full range of users and maintain accuracy," says the white paper. "At the wavelengths that Apple Watch uses, melanin is a strong light absorber -- particularly in the green and red part of the spectrum -- potentially making PPG measurements more difficult in users with darker skin tones."
"To account for this," it continues, "the Apple Watch sensing platform senses the amount of detected light signals, and it automatically adjusts the LED current (and hence the light output), photodiode gain (sensitivity to light), and sampling rate to ensure adequate signal resolution across the range of human skin tones."
Previous issues
The 2022 lawsuit isn't the only complaint the Apple Watch has faced with regard to skin. Back in 2015, users complained that black wrist tattoos interfered with the device's heart sensor.Apple confirmed the issue in May 2015. "Permanent or temporary changes to your skin, such as some tattoos, can also impact heart rate sensor performance, read an updated support page. "The ink, pattern, and saturation of some tattoos can block light from the sensor, making it difficult to get reliable readings."
Those issues happened before the addition of the blood oxygen sensor, which Apple added to the product line with the Apple Watch Series 6 in 2020.
Apple Sued Over Racial Bias in Heart Rate Monitoring by Mike Wuerthele on Scribd
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Comments
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safety-communications/pulse-oximeter-accuracy-and-limitations-fda-safety-communication
That quoted text isn't from me and this isn't only an issue with Apple's sensor tech, but every IR-based pulse oximeter technology.
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/skin-tone-pulse-oximetry
While I hope we find a solution works the same regardless of pigmentation (which can be tattoos) or melanin having a frivolous lawsuit that doesn't care about the longstanding issues with the technology doesn't help that.
Yup, we live in a crazy world of victimization, to the next level. Can't help but think they are just trying to be opportunistic by filing a lawsuit against a company that is bound by the limits of PHYSICS!
https://fas.org/blogs/sciencepolicy/an-overdue-fix-racial-bias-and-pulse-oximeters/
This isn't a new issue, either. This has been around as long as the Apple Watch (in regards to Apple) and since this tech first came about since the 1980s.
https://thegrio.com/2015/05/01/apple-watch-dark-skin/
They key here is that even though the limits of oximeters are known, Apple went ahead and introduced the feature regardless of how it would impact users’ experience. No disclaimers. No apparent skin tone detection. No on Watch warning or dialogue allowing you to adjust for skin tone. And do on. It’s marketed, engineered, and now defended as working for the default skin color assumption... i.e light-skinned people. It’s not a leap to assume that has there been more people with darker skin tones involved in the decision making, this would have been flagged as a bug or a non-starter. So yes, this is the sort of structural or chain of casual racism that you can encounter.
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The separate case regarding medical treatment outcomes will likely be the more serious and far-reaching. The medical industry has a history of these types of errors in judgment. We’ll have to wait and see how well the device makers trained people, what disclaimers are in training literature, research papers and the like, as well as how well hospitals and other organizations trained their staffs.
I’ll remind everyone that if the shoe were on the other foot, and light skinned people’s lives had been endangered by a fault in the device or training, this would be a major shitfest in general, in the news cycle for weeks, and likely the target of very public and swift government reaction.
Also, anyone trotting out “frivolous lawsuit” — have a care. That term has been weaponized to question the legitimacy of valid the legal rights of black and brown Americans for decades. Do some research before you use that as a point of argument.
There’s also a bunch of folks that mixing up the two cases. The case for medical treatment is being referred to as supporting evidence that Apple management and engineers should or would have known about the technology’s limitations as currently designed.
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For anyone interested in well researched institutional racism, how casually it’s applied, and what cumulative effect it continues to have on generations of Americans, I highly recommend The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. It’s an excellent example of legal and historical analysis being applied to understand American legal history, and how it’s been used to create and defend racial hierarchies.
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Please think twice before responding to me in anything less than a civil and respectful way. If all you’re going to do is trot out manufactured talking points and threats to society, don’t bother. You’ve had quite enough air-time already. I won’t engage trolls.
For anyone with a good-faith question or argument, I’ll do my best to respond, given my limited time and energy. (And also limited patience. Educate yourselves, people. If it were an engineering issue, you’d go look up info in technical and science resources — not Faux News and it’s ilk. Do the same here. Read a book, even if you disagree with it. Or ask me for a link or several.)