Patent ID: 7645373

Claim:
A method for forming a test strip for measuring a concentration of an analyte of interest in a biological fluid, the method comprising the steps of: providing a basic test strip design comprising: a substrate having a surface and at least one measurement electrode formed thereon; a plurality of conductive contact pads formed upon the substrate surface, including at least one information contact pad and at least one measurement contact pad; and a plurality of latent conductive links conductively coupling members of the plurality of contact pads; wherein the at least one information contact pad is not coupled to any of the at least one measurement electrodes except by conductive paths comprising one or more of the plurality of latent conductive links, and the at least one measurement contact pad is coupled to one of the at least one measurement electrodes by a path excluding the plurality of latent conductive links; defining a set of valid test strip designs based upon said basic test strip design; wherein each one of the set of valid test strip designs incorporates none, one or more than one of the plurality of latent conductive links; and wherein at least one of the plurality of latent conductive links couples a first one of the information contact pads to a first one of the measurement contact pads in a first valid test strip design, and at least one of the plurality of latent conductive links couples the first one of the information contact pads to a second one of the measurement contact pads in a second valid test strip design; selecting one design from the set of valid test strip designs; and forming a test strip per the selected one design.