Systems and methods disclosed here provide ways to discriminate fault types encountered in analyte sensors and systems and further provide ways to process such discriminated faults responsively based on sensor data, clinical context information, and other data about the patient or patient's environment. The systems and methods thus employ clinical context in detecting and/or responding to errors or faults associated with an analyte sensor system, and discriminating the type of fault, and its root cause, particularly as fault dynamics can appear similar to the dynamics of physiological systems, emphasizing the importance of discriminating the fault and providing appropriate responsive processing. Thus, the disclosed systems and methods consider the context of the patient's health condition or state in determining how to respond to the fault.