1. A method for reducing processing load of a patient monitor, the method comprising: emitting light from a light emitting element of a physiological sensor; detecting at the physiological sensor light from the light emitting element after it has been attenuated by tissue; receiving at a patient monitor physiological data from the physiological sensor based at least in part on the detected light; calculating at the patient monitor in real-time a first value for each feature of one or more features of the physiological data, wherein each feature comprises a plurality of categories; assigning the physiological data to a category of the plurality of categories for each feature based on a respective first value of the each feature; assigning a second value to the physiological data for each feature based on the assigned category from the plurality of categories; determining, using an electronic lookup table, an action from a set of actions to perform based on an aggregation of each second value from each of the one or more features; and activating an alarm based at least in part on the determined action.