Patent ID: 8623660

Claim:
A hand-held test meter for use with an analytical test strip in the determination of an analyte in a bodily fluid sample, the hand-held test meter comprising: a housing; a microcontroller block disposed in the housing; and a phase-shift-based hematocrit measurement block disposed in the housing, the phase-shift-based hematocrit measurement block including, in series order: a signal generation sub-block configured to generate at least a first electrical signal of a first frequency is in the range of 10 kHz to 25 kHz and a second electrical signal of a second frequency in the range of 250 kHz to 500 kHz; a low pass filter sub-block; an analytical test strip sample cell interface sub-block; a transimpedance amplifier sub-block; and a phase detector sub-block, wherein the phase-shift-based hematocrit measurement block and microcontroller block are configured to measure the phase shift of a bodily fluid sample in a sample cell of an analytical test strip inserted in the hand-held test meter using both the first signal of the first frequency and the second signal of the second frequency, wherein the phase-shift-based hematocrit measurement block and microcontroller block are configured such that the signal of the first frequency is employed as a reference signal during the measurement of the phase shift of a bodily fluid sample; and wherein the microcontroller block is configured to compute the hematocrit of the bodily fluid based on the measured phase shift.