A system for managing health data, comprising: a portable blood glucose meter including: a port configured to receive a test sensor, a processor configured to execute program instructions to calculate the concentration of the analyte collected by the test sensor, a data storage system including a first memory device storing the data-management software and the initialization program, and a second memory device storing the health data including blood-glucose data, the initialization program launching the data-management software on a processing device and the data-management software processing the health data on the processing device, and a data communications interface, and a processing device configured to be communicatively connected to the portable blood glucose meter via the data communications interface; wherein, upon establishment of the data communications between the portable blood glucose meter and the processing device, the initialization program launches the data-management software on the processing device without requiring prior installation, on the processing device, of an additional program component associated with the data-management software, upon startup of the data-management software, the portable blood glucose meter is reconfigured from a more universal USB MSD configuration to a specific data-management configuration, so as to prevent one or more other applications executing on the processing device from accessing the health data on the portable blood glucose meter, the data-management software processes the health data without permanently storing the data on the processing device, thereby keeping the health data secure on the data storage system, and the data-management software removes any data on the processing device associated with the data-management software before ending execution. a portable blood glucose meter including: a port configured to receive a test sensor, a processor configured to execute program instructions to calculate the concentration of the analyte collected by the test sensor, a data storage system including a first memory device storing the data-management software and the initialization program, and a second memory device storing the health data including blood-glucose data, the initialization program launching the data-management software on a processing device and the data-management software processing the health data on the processing device, and a data communications interface, and a port configured to receive a test sensor, a processor configured to execute program instructions to calculate the concentration of the analyte collected by the test sensor, a data storage system including a first memory device storing the data-management software and the initialization program, and a second memory device storing the health data including blood-glucose data, the initialization program launching the data-management software on a processing device and the data-management software processing the health data on the processing device, and a data communications interface, and a processing device configured to be communicatively connected to the portable blood glucose meter via the data communications interface; wherein, upon establishment of the data communications between the portable blood glucose meter and the processing device, the initialization program launches the data-management software on the processing device without requiring prior installation, on the processing device, of an additional program component associated with the data-management software, upon startup of the data-management software, the portable blood glucose meter is reconfigured from a more universal USB MSD configuration to a specific data-management configuration, so as to prevent one or more other applications executing on the processing device from accessing the health data on the portable blood glucose meter, the data-management software processes the health data without permanently storing the data on the processing device, thereby keeping the health data secure on the data storage system, and the data-management software removes any data on the processing device associated with the data-management software before ending execution.