A method for diagnosing one or more diseases of the respiratory tract for a patient including the steps of: acquiring cough sounds from the patient； processing the cough sounds to produce cough sound feature signals representing one or more cough sound features from the cough segments； obtaining one or more disease signatures based on the cough sound feature signals； and classifying the one or more disease signatures to deem the cough segments as indicative of one or more of said diseases； wherein the step of obtaining the one or more disease signatures based on the cough sound feature signals includes applying the cough sound features to each of one or more pre-trained disease signature decision machines, each said decision machine having been pre-trained to classify the cough sound features as corresponding to either a particular disease or to a non-disease state or as corresponding to first particular disease or a second particular disease different from the first particular disease.
