Medical devices and methods

An apparatus for bi-directional communication in an analyte monitoring system, comprising:

• a storage device having stored therein one or more routines;
• a processing unit operatively coupled to the storage device and configured to retrieve the stored one or more routines for execution;
• a data transmission component operatively coupled to the processing unit and configured to transmit data based at least in part on the one or more routines executed by the processing unit;
• and
• a data reception component operatively coupled to the processing unit and configured to receive analyte related data from a remote location and to store the received analyte related data in the storage device for retransmission;
• wherein the data transmission component is programmed to transmit a query to a remote location;
• and further
• wherein the data reception component receives the analyte related data from the remote location in response to the transmitted query when one or more electronics in the remote location transitions from an inactive state to an active state upon detection of the query from the data transmission component.