When looking at laboratory supply for a clinic, you might expect to see different or more complicated machines and devices. After all, a clinic usually specializes in a certain aspect of medicine, and is usually best equipped to deal with a certain branch of medicine. Thus, a dermatological clinic should have equipment for diagnosing skin diseases, a cancer clinic should have machines to help identify tumors, and so forth.

Clinics vs. Other Medical Labs

In reality, the average clinical laboratory is stocked in a much similar fashion to a regular medical lab--at least as a basis. Any lab will require the same essential equipment for the analysis of samples taken from the human body. There are common and accepted practices for analyzing biological material, and these remain the same for all branches of medicine.

The biggest difference between a clinical lab and a general lab is that the clinic will have different reagents and software programs to do the work that they need to do. Often, a clinical lab will have very elaborate series of tests for certain diseases, but these involve different chemical agents rather than different equipment. Thus, the machinery will largely be familiar to someone from another lab, but the procedures may be foreign.

Also, a clinic may have different diagnostic equipment on hand. This is where the cost of a clinical lab will rise sharply, as a clinic often needs to have an MRI machine or CAT scanner on the grounds. These are not strictly lab equipment, but are necessary to know where samples should be taken from for testing.