Medical books and devices could be racist, claims Javid
MEDICAL textbooks could be racist, the Health Secretary has said, as he launched a review into oxygen metre devices amid concerns they are not as reliable for ethnic minorities.
Sajid Javid said there may be a “systemic racial bias” in health services around the world, which has been exposed by the pandemic.
A Uk-led review will assess potential racial and gender bias in the design and use of medical devices, such as oximeters which measure oxygen levels through the skin.
Mr Javid said the devices “in many cases, [were] giving false readings” because of darker skin tones.
“There are research papers already on this and no one did anything about it,” Mr Javid told Trevor Phillips On Sunday on Sky News.
“I’m not saying this was deliberate by anyone, I think it’s just, it’s a systemic issue potentially, with medical devices, and it may go even further than that with medical textbooks, for example.”
Mr Javid’s independent review will look into why people from black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds often have worse health outcomes than others.
Writing in The Sunday Times, he cited research on pulse oximeters which has suggested that they are less accurate in darker-skinned patients.
A review conducted by the NHS Race and Health Observatory, published earlier this year, found the devices could be giving “seriously misleading” results for BAME patients.
One study cited in the NHS review from 1990 found inaccurate readings were more than two times more common in black patients than white.
Mr Javid said: “One of the founding principles of our NHS is equality, and the possibility that a bias, even an inadvertent one, could lead to a poorer health outcome is totally unacceptable.”
The review, which will see UK authorities working with the United States, will look at introducing a new international standard to make sure medical devices have been tested on people of different races before use.
The Health Secretary also said the review will also look at “other important biases such as gender bias” to [ensure] “MRI scanners [are] accessible to pregnant or breastfeeding women”.