Point-of-care pulse oximetry for children in low-resource settings

Pulse oximeters are essential medical devices that have important applications at every level of global health systems. By the early 1990s pulse oximetry had become an established standard of care - first in anesthesia and then throughout critical care, including emergency medicine, neonatal and other care areas. The future must include better oximeters for spot-checking the peripheral oxygen saturation of children in hospital wards and in facility-based outpatient and community environments in low-resource settings. The benefits of oximeters are not only in detecting hypoxemia and directing oxygen care. Given the importance of hypoxemia as a sign of severe illness, healthcare workers need a more reliable test to non-invasively measure blood oxygen levels at the bedside. Currently many pulse oximeters have sophisticated motion tolerance software to improve their functioning in mobile children, but these devices are currently prohibitively expensive for low-resource settings.