A new study has found that changing the color of hospital gowns may benefit physicians’ ability to diagnose certain skin diseases, according to findings published in Medical Hypothesis.

Irregular skin color can often be a symptom of cyanosis, a condition in which the skin turns bluish because of a lack of oxygen, as well as other related illnesses. Detecting different skin hues may cause misdiagnoses because of the color of the hospital gowns or bed sheets being used by the patients.

The authors of this report conclude that because skin color change associated with many diseases is only a slight difference, this symptom is often missed because physicians and nurses assume it’s the patient’s natural skin color.

In addition to changing the colors of hospital gowns and bed sheets, the development and use of adhesive tabs that represent a wide variety of skin tones may also improve diagnosing skin-related diseases.

“If a patient’s skin color shifts a small amount, the change will often be imperceptible to doctors and nurses,” said Mark Changizi, assistant professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He added that if patients are “wearing a skin-colored gown or adhesive tab, however, and their skin uniformly changes slightly more blue, the initially ‘invisible’ gown or tab will appear bright and yellow to the observer.”

In 2006, more than 3.5 million cases of skin cancer, one of the most common skin diseases, were diagnosed in the U.S., according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.