With the advancement of medical technologies, it has become common for people to travel to different places to obtain the best medical care. The whole process of traveling to a different country in search of better medical care at reduced costs is called medical tourism.
More and more people from developed countries today prefer to travel to developing countries to get the treatment at lower prices. The reason for this could be the unavailability of specific treatments in their country or the desired treatments being illegal. The medical travel is usually done for surgeries while there are also people who go in search of different areas of treatment including psychiatry, dental care, and the likes.
Experience and expertise in the field combined with innovative techniques have given a boost to medical tourism. Here are some points regarding how the technology has contributed to this area.
#1. Rapid Expansion in Private and Public Sectors
Unlike before, there is a drastic change and improvement in the infrastructure of the hospitals. The developing countries including India have come a long way in implementing medical tourism technology due to the world class expertise of the practitioners. Every area like cosmetic surgery, neurological treatments, joint replacements and the likes has witnessed great improvements. The number of hospitals, both normal and super-specialty, have increased in India resulting in the ability to give faster treatments.
In a way, it can be said that private sector has advanced more due to the various experiments conducted with innovative ideas and and current trends. The hospital chains of India have taken their standards to a new level to provide healthcare matching international quality. Technology is being used in every area of medical tourism to provide the best facilities to patients who seek treatment.
It is estimated that around 75 percent of the healthcare services in India are under the private sector. It is interesting to know that India has one of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world. As a result, the country ranks high in drug production and exports drugs to 180 countries at much affordable prices than United States. It is to be noted that following the path of the private sector, the public sector in India is also developing at a fast pace.
#2. Cloud and Social Networks
Cloud is the recent trend which aids every industry in its growth. So is the case with healthcare industry. Using cloud, it is possible to make an electronic medical record (EMR) for each patient and store it in a shared network. All the service providers of medical tourism and doctors can access this EMR in real time. The best medical tourism hospitalsmake use of these records to improve their efficiency.
EMR greatly reduces the chances of errors and eliminates the need for repeated tests while switching hospitals. In a world dominated by the internet and related technologies, it is better to opt for system-based services instead of the traditional paper-based ones. The biggest advantage is that these records can be easily accessed on smartphones too.
The social network is yet another platform that helps patients to connect with doctors and consultants across the world. Doctors can also contact each other in case of queries regarding the diagnosis. Using this facility, many patients from developed countries keep in touch with Indian doctors.
#3. Information Technology
It has been possible to maintain a global repository of information with Information Technology. The symptoms of patients can be analyzed by comparing them with the records of millions of patients available and thereby diagnose the diseases relatively faster.
When the diseases are identified in time, it is possible to give better care to the patients and cure them. Data mining can be used to create a cloud-based infrastructure which contains medical data from around the world. This enables the use of best medical procedures to provide optimal treatment to patients from different parts of the world. Pharmacies can also contribute by providing the medicines at the required time anywhere in the world.
Wrapping Up
Thus, the innovation in medical tourism has contributed a lot to the advancement of the healthcare industry. This way, a lot of focus has been directed towards countries like India, Singapore, Thailand and others which promise better medical care at reduced costs. Another plus point is that there is no more endless waiting for getting the services, thanks to the increase in the number of hospitals.
Luxurious medical recovery is on a rise these days. Days are not far behind when hospitals which provide the little pampering along with the necessary treatment to the patients would be the most sought-after. Wellness tourism is a related term which differentiates the modern treatments from the traditional ones. Giving such extra care at prices lower than the patient’s home country is a sure shot way of pulling medical tourists from the developed countries to the developing ones.
