A flexible clip applier includes a flat wire wound tubular coil, a pair of jaws at the end of the coil, end effector wires extending through the coil and coupled to the jaws, and a clip-advancing wire extending through the coil. A preferred embodiment of the present invention comprises a cartridge including a microfabricated silicon chip on a printed circuit board and a flow cell mounted to the chip to form a flow chamber. The method also includes communicating the data to a computing device, which can receive the data and perform any number of operations.