Medical Tourism and its Entrepreneurial Opportunities - a conceptual framework for entry into the industry

Abstract

9am: Kneecap replacement, 2pm onwards: Recovery on Phuket Island, Thailand. Surgery and leisure, a dream? Not any more. Medical tourism is where “tourists” primarily seek medical treatment abroad and afterwards the more conventional form or tourism experience related to leisure and relaxation in tourist places. The combination of surgery and tourism seems to be a promising relatively new type of non-exclusive niche tourism. Factors contributing to this phenomenon include long waiting lists for surgery, costly healthcare, a natural progression within health tourism and globalisation. The structure of our thesis is divided in three parts 1) a market description of the medical tourism reality, 2) development of an entrepreneurship-based conceptual framework related to market entry into a medical tourism as a niche market and, 3) superimposition of the latter on the former to serve as a guide for entrepreneurs entering medical tourism. Salient features of our analysis indicate that while there is an absence of a global governing institution neither regulating nor endorsing medical tourism the niche market provides lots of investment opportunities, moreover there is room for more specific academic research within medical tourism.

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