1. A computer program product operative in a data processing system for use in classifying an input pattern into one of a plurality of output classes, the computer program product comprising: a plurality of modular classifiers, each representing a set of at least one associated output class, capable of being trained separately from the system and operative to select one of the set of at least one associated output class as a classification result and compute an associated confidence value possessing common significance across the classifiers; and a processing stage that processes the confidence values from the plurality of modular classifiers and selects an associated classification result.