This disclosure describes systems and methods for detecting and quantifying transmission delays associated with distributed sensing and monitoring functions within a ventilatory system. Specifically, the present methods and systems described herein define an event-based delay detection algorithm for determining transmission delays between distributed signal measurement and processing subsystems and a central platform that receives data from these subsystems. It is important to evaluate and quantify transmission delays because dyssynchrony in data communication may result in the misalignment of visualization and monitoring systems or instability in closed-loop control systems. Generally, embodiments described herein seek to quantify transmission delays by selecting a ventilator-based defining event as a temporal baseline and calculating the delay between the inception of the defining event and the receipt of data regarding the defining event from one or more distributed sensing devices.