to experience a single u201c look and feel u201d when sampling a body fluid sample analyzing the sample and or managing patient data regardless of the instrument as an example a common menu structure can be employed such that the messaging functions all appear under one menu option that is consistent across all instruments 104 and operational functions such as processing a patient sample can be described using common terminology with like screen coloring command controls and help text the analytical module 304 the user interface 316 and the data management module 320 are software modules that can be written in any computer programming language such as java or c in some embodiments where the instruments 104 are manufactured by different vendors a browser like interface may be included as the user interface 316 thus enabling the use of standard data rendering data transmission and data presentation technologies such as html http https xml soap web services and the like examples of browser interfaces include but are not limited to applications such as internet explorer by mircosoft corporation of redmond wa netscape navigator by aol time warner of sunnyvale calif and mozilla firefox by the mozilla foundation of mountain view calif the user interface 316 enables a user to for example view a snapshot of the instrument screen display review patient data or quality control results review the instrument 39 s status enable.