The invention provides a method for automatically identifying cough. The method comprises the following steps of: (1) inputting voice signals in a PCM format; (2) performing endpoint detection on the voice signals in the PCM format, eliminating non-cough signals and taking the rest signals as candidate cough signals; (3) extracting characteristics of the candidate cough signals according to frames, and converting the characteristics into a 39-dimensional characteristic vector sequence; (4) training a hidden Markov model according to the extracted characteristic vector sequence, identifying the candidate cough signals and judging whether the candidate cough signals are cough signals; (5) counting the cough signals in a certain time period. The invention further provides a device for implementing the method, which comprises a voice input device, an identifier, an SD card, a display device and a group of buttons, wherein the voice input device, the SD card, the display device and the buttons are connected with the identifier respectively. The method and the device can realize real-time recording and automatic identification of the cough and analyze dynamic change characteristic of cough frequency and intensity.