A team led by a University of Texas at Arlington bioengineering professor and an Austin businessman has published key findings in the British Medical Journal Innovations that illustrate how a new device measures hemoglobin more accurately in individuals with darker skin pigments.

A clinical study was conducted at UT Arlington by bioengineering professor George Alexandrakis and Dr. Vinoop Daggubati of Shani Biotechnologies LLC to measure hemoglobin and oxygen levels in 16 healthy volunteers using the new technology.

The results were compared to those obtained using a commercially available pulse-oximeter to determine accuracy and variability.

Racial disparities in hemoglobin and blood oxygen measurements are an urgent public health issue. Currently available devices are inaccurate in people with dark skin.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a safety communication and organized an advisory committee meeting on Nov. 1, 2022, to discuss this issue at length.

The UTA team’s research findings are encouraging, and this new technology has enormous potential to address this critical clinical shortfall. Alexandrakis envisages developing a wearable device, such as a watch or a monitor, that would measure blood through the skin.

Current hemoglobin monitoring methods usually involve blood tests and costly equipment.

Noninvasive spectroscopic methods are frequently inaccurate in people with darker skin due to melanin differences, leading to a significant unmet need for an accurate, noninvasive hemoglobin estimator.

A pulse-oximeter that uses blue-green light instead of red-infrared light, which has been in use for over 50 years, was developed by the team and relies on the spectroscopic characteristics of hemoglobin rather than on the red-infrared spectrum of light.

Dr. Daggubati said “We have used the green-blue light and have successfully tested the device in preclinical and clinical studies,”

“Our group has addressed the issues around shorter wavelength, scattering of light and the impact of skin melanin.”

“The Shani device has the potential to eliminate racial disparities in these measurements, and the scientific community should open its mind to the idea.” Dr. Daggubati said,