To more accurately evaluate the health state of rolling bearings, this paper proposes a health status evaluation method based on empirical pattern decomposition, genetic algorithm and BP neural network. Firstly, the vibration signal is decomposed by empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and the time domain features of each intrinsic mode function (IMF) component are extracted, and the signal‐to‐noise ratio (Snr) of the signal is improved effectively. Then, the initial threshold and weight of BP neural network are optimized by genetic algorithm, which effectively improves the Snr of the signal. Finally, the extracted features are input into the optimized BP neural network to realize the identification of different states of the bearing. The effectiveness of the method has been effectively verified in the bearing data of Case Western Reserve University bearing dataset and it has higher accuracy and robustness than other common evaluation methods.