1. A method of manufacturing a pulse oximeter configured to classify patient data comprising: collecting a set of sample data, wherein the sample data comprises oxygen saturation traces; classifying the sample data as either pathological or normal using human expertise; generating statistics of interest representing the sample data; composing a linear discriminator having a non-linear transform that accepts as input the statistics of interest; and programming a pulse oximeter to compute the linear discriminator using a kernel function, wherein the pulse oximeter is configured to use the linear discriminator to classify measured parameters as indicating a normal or pathological condition and to communicate the classification to a user.