A system (10) for assessing the health of a patient includes one or more sensors (32) which generate medical data representing a patients oxygen saturation and a health assessment system (12) which determines a recovery response from an oxygen desaturation event detected from the medical data and generates a health assessment based on the patients recovery response. The recovery response being determined by at least one of determining a time period from a detection of the oxygenation desaturation event to the patient reaching predetermined oxygen saturation, determining an increase in the oxygen saturation after a fixed amount of time after detection of the oxygenation desaturation event, and determining a rate of an increase in the oxygen saturation.
