Years of research have showed that pulse oximeters yield less accurate readings for people with darker skin tones, and now the US Food and Drug Administration is proposing guidance to help make these devices more reliable and less biased.

Rather than relying on those testing the devices to judge skin tones, the draft guidance suggests manufacturers should use both the newly developed Monk Skin Tone scale and another scale, called the individual typology angle (ITA), which is based on spectrophotometric measurements.

The U.S. health regulator on Monday proposed new guidelines for widely-used blood oxygen monitoring devices to improve their performance across skin tones amid growing evidence that the current ones are not reliable for patients with darker skin.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed new guidance for devices used to monitor blood oxygen levels to improve their accuracy and performance across a range of skin tones.