Patent ID: 7309314

Claim:
A method for predicting respiratory disturbances in an individual comprising the steps of: a) identifying patients having obstructive sleep apnea; b) determining actual Apopnea Hypopnea Index (AHI) in the patients; c) obtaining pulse oximetry recordings from the patients; d) determining patient data comprising a set of indices from the pulse oximetry readings comprising: delta index, time spent at selected oxygen saturation levels and oxygen desaturation events; e) performing random sampling with replacement of patient data from (d) to generate a plurality of data sets; f) performing multivariate non-parametric analysis in the plurality of data sets to generate a plurality of prediction models; g) obtaining a provisional predictive AHI value for each patient corresponding to each prediction model; h) comparing the provisional predictive AHI value to actual AHI value for each patient to provide weight to each prediction model; and i) providing each prediction model to a health care professional, wherein the plurality of prediction models and weight of the prediction models provides a predictive tool for predicting respiratory disturbances in an individual.