Guide

Panels, profiles and packages: what you actually paid for

Arkalife Editorial Team · Reviewed Aug 2026 · 2 min read

"Full body checkup", "executive health package", "wellness profile" — these are commercial names, not test definitions. Two packages with the same name at two labs can contain different tests.

What a panel actually is

A panel is a group of individual measurements ordered and reported together. The NHS lists the common ones by their functional names: "Full blood count (FBC)", "Blood glucose", "Urea and electrolytes/renal panel", "Lipid profile", "Total protein test", "Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH)".

Each of those is a bundle. A full blood count is not one number — it is a set of counts and indices reported as a block. A lipid profile is typically four measured values plus whatever the lab derives from them.

Why the names vary

There is no requirement that a laboratory use a particular name for a particular bundle. The same group of tests may appear as "renal panel", "kidney function test", "KFT" or "urea and electrolytes". A "thyroid profile" may mean TSH alone at one lab and TSH with free T3 and free T4 at another.

This is the same problem as individual test names, one level up. It is why the contents of the report are more informative than the title on it.

Working out what you got

The reliable method is to ignore the package name and count the rows. Every measurement performed appears as a line with its own result, unit and reference interval. If a marker is not printed, it was not measured — a report cannot omit a result it produced.

It is worth doing this deliberately when comparing a package year to year, because the bundle can change while the name stays the same.

What is usually not included

Plenty. Broad packages tend to cover common blood chemistry, a blood count, a lipid profile and often a thyroid and a diabetes marker. Markers outside that core — vitamins, specific hormones, iron studies beyond a basic measure, inflammatory markers — are frequently separate line items that have to be requested.

Their absence is not visible on the report. A page of normal results says nothing about tests that were never run, and that is the most common misreading of a health package.

Reading across packages

If you are comparing this year's package to last year's, check the row count before checking the values. A marker that "disappeared" usually was not measured this time, and a marker that appears "new" may simply have been added to the bundle. Neither is a change in you.

Sources

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