ARUP is a reference laboratory that is part of the University of Utah. When a physician wants to run a test on a patients blood or other fluid for diagnostic purposes, there are a few options for where the test is run. Some hospitals are equipped to run many common tests. When a test exceeds what the hospital can do however, a patient’s sample is then sent to a better equipped lab, such as ARUP. ARUP is one of the largest reference laboratories in the nation, and has hundreds of thousands of samples that are tested there every week. These samples are tested for everything from cancer markers in the blood to creatinine levels in the urine to even looking for genetic markers in blood serum. ARUP has many different laboratories that are all running very specific tests in order to help diagnose patients. Statistics show that information discovered from the tests at ARUP and other reference labs make up about 70% of a diagnosis of a patient. This is why these laboratories are so crucial for modern medicine
