Global Medical Tourism Industry-A Future Perspective

Medical tourism is an ever-expanding industry wherein individuals travel to an alternate nation that offers extraordinary healthcare administrations and systems, writes Amit Sharma, Group Chief Executive Officer, eExpedise Group

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Medical tourism industry is a term that has ascended from the fast development of an industry where individuals from all around the globe travel to different nations to acquire restorative, dental, and surgical consideration while simultaneously visiting, traveling, and completely observing the attractions of the nations that they are visiting. The term, “Worldwide Healthcare”, has developed and may supplant the prior terms. Such administrations normally incorporate elective systems just as intricate medical procedures, for example, joint replacement, cardiovascular surgery, dental medical procedure, and restorative medical procedures.
There are a few purposes behind the expansion in medical tourism industry. To start with, the socioeconomics of the developed countries are creating a huge market for medicinal services. In Japan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and numerous other European countries, the extent of the populace older than 60 years, is increasing quickly. Comparable patterns are being seen in numerous nations over the world. Simultaneously, life expectancy in many nations has likewise expanded consistently throughout the years; the joined outcome is huge strain on national medicinal services frameworks. The failure of numerous healthcare frameworks, by and large, leads to compromised of administration, diminished access and insignificant expensive treatments. This drives numerous people to look for options in contrast to domestic medical services.

The global medical tourism market was valued at $53,768 million in 2017, and is estimated to reach at $143,461 million by 2025, registering a CAGR of 12.9% from 2018 to 2025.

Medical tourism is an ever-expanding industry wherein individuals travel to an alternate nation that offers extraordinary healthcare administrations and systems. Extensively, the social healthcare sector is distributed among a top of the line segment (those worldwide strategies for corporate expats), a mid-advertise (items for the hopeful white-collar classes) and low-end (passage level items regularly sold as riders to Life insurance).
Different nations that are listed among the top ten are Singapore, India and Malaysia that together witness an excess of 500,000 medical tourists every year. Different theories behind these numbers include the way that the laws and arrangements are friendlier which make it appealing. The visitors contribute fundamentally as they not just create revenues but employment too. These days, there are provisions where India gives a medicinal visa to medical tourists just as a quality life-saving technique.
Because of higher and over the top expensive medical expenses in the Western nations, patients from countries like Africa, Gulf and different Asian nations have begun opting for medicinal treatment in emergency clinics situated in different places in India. This is on the grounds that its healthcare sector has outfitted to give them non-financed medicinal treatment at much lower costs.
Different reasons with respect to why India would develop as a lead center for great medicinal treatment is a result of its quality of profoundly qualified surgical experts and even similarly higher characteristics of accessibility of attendants. India has more than qualified specialists and nursing graduates and certificate holders in humungous numbers which is great. The financial downturn has had a huge negative impact on the medical travel industry. The number of U.S. patients who traveled to another country looking for therapeutic consideration declined from 750,000 out of 2007 to 540,000 in 2008. An expansion of transportation expenses became another factor adding to the increase in U.S. patients going for care abroad and a decrease in the rate at which outsiders are coming to the U.S for medicinal consideration.
A look at the situation globally
Thailand has topped the list in getting the greatest number of medical aid travelers, which turns out to be about 1.3 million on a yearly premise, creating almost $3.7 billion from the Thai medical tourism industry.
As indicated by the reports of the World Health Organization (WHO), Hungary is equally developing as a medical travel industry center point for the European countries by attracting practically 1.8 million visitors every year. Most of these tourists travel for dental medicines.
The medical travel industry showcase in Europe (EU) has become exponentially over the previous years by virtue of the 2014 European Directive on Cross-Border human services that permits EU residents free access to social insurance in all member states of the region. Further, nations in Eastern and Central Europe, for example, Poland, Turkey, Hungary, Latvia, and Romania have turned out to be perfect the travel industry goals for Western Europeans. Besides, a few nations in the district team up to give certain medicinal services administrations to different nations under certain conditions.
The Middle East and Africa area incorporate a variety of developing countries with innovation and advancement that energizes the medical travel industry. Additionally, with rising social insurance costs in developing nations, for example, United States (U.S) and United Kingdom (U.K), individuals are getting ready to venture out to this part of the world for quality and reasonable medicinal services administrations. These components are exceptionally instrumental in the market development of medicinal the travel industry in the area.
Way forward
Gradually, we are beginning to see the development of coordinated stages that incorporate teleconsultations (pre-and post-trip), billing, and managing the medical records. We are likewise to observe patient surveys of specialists and emergency clinics, distributed results measures and maybe more. This will enable the business to institutionalize and scale-up, and help visitors pick, book and pay for their treatment in ever more noteworthy numbers. Innovation additionally may introduce a few open doors in the region of interpretation (of test outcomes) into the patient’s language. We may likewise observe soon the arrangement of AI at the front-end and medical procedures, in domestic and foreign countries alike.

About Author: Amit Sharma is the Group Chief Executive Officer of the eExpedise Group. Amit has over 17 years of experience in various domains put of which 8 years in Healthcare and Wellness. He is a certified Medical and wellness tourism Expert by the Medical Tourism Association (MTA) and Six Sigma Black Belt. He has done extensive research on the healthcare industry and has been working towards bringing transparency, ease and accessibility in healthcare and wellness Industry.