Abstract:
Measurement of blood oxygen saturation is a
vital part of monitoring coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) patients.
Pulse oximetry is commonly used to measure blood oxygen
saturation and pulse rate for appropriate clinical intervention. But
the majority of direct-to-consumer grade pulse oximeters did not
pass through in-vivo testing, which results in their accuracy being
questionable. Besides this, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
exposed the limitations of the device in resource limited areas since
independent monitoring is needed for COVID-19 patients. The
purpose of this study was to perform an in-vivo evaluation of a
newly developed smartphone powered low-cost pulse oximeter.
METHODS: The new prototype of a smartphone powered pulse
oximeter was evaluated against the standard pulse oximeter by
taking measurements from fifteen healthy volunteers. The
accuracy of measurement was evaluated by calculating the
percentage error and standard deviation. A repeatability and
reproducibility test were carried out using the ANOVA method.
RESULTS: The average accuracy for measuring spot oxygen
saturation (SPO2) and pulse rate (PR) was 99.18% with a standard
deviation of 0.57 and 98.78% with a standard deviation of 0.61,
respectively, when compared with the standard pulse oximeter
device. The repeatability and reproducibility of SPO2
measurements were 0.28 and 0.86, respectively, which is in the
acceptable range.
CONCLUSION: The new prototype of smartphone powered pulse
oximeter demonstrated better performance compared to the
existing low-cost fingertip pulse oximeters. The device could be
used for independent monitoring of COVID-19 patients at health
institutions and also for home care.
