As long as people’s attention to their health increases, health services become competitive and cost differences remain the main factor, medical tourism will increase more rapidly in the future. In particular, the demand for the main topics such as care for the elderly with chronic diseases, rehabilitation-oriented health services, oncological surgery, medical oncology, stem cell treatments, gene sequencing, plastic surgery, and obesity surgery will continue, so that for these applications, which are extremely costly, people will seek cross-border services. It can be easily stated that it will create significant demand. As shown in the table below, it is estimated that the basic elements of health tourism today, such as gynecological surgery, endocrinological diseases, heart surgeries, childhood cardiac surgery, will be performed all over the world in the near future.
The number of countries aiming to develop medical tourism and thus economic growth is increasing. The success of health tourism in Asia increases global interest and competition. For example, despite the fact that Southeast Asian countries are destinations with relatively high costs for thermal health tourism travels, they want to attract 1 million patients with a revenue target of 2.5 billion dollars in 2015. If this target is realized, at least 20,000 new job opportunities will be created. Dubai has implemented the Dubai Healthcare City project to prevent Middle Eastern tourists from going to Asia. While health tourism targets the middle income group and above all groups in developed countries, it targets the high income group in developing countries. For example, high-income citizens of countries such as Kenya or Ukraine spend billions of dollars each year for health expenses abroad.
In Japan, it is seen as prestige that individuals with middle and higher income groups go abroad, for example, to Thailand or Singapore, even for simple health services. In addition, Japan’s encouragement of its elderly population to go to elderly health care centers in foreign countries shows the different contribution levels of countries to the health tourism sector. It is foreseen that the development in health tourism will continue exponentially and the sector has the potential to accelerate the transition from a low value-added economy to a high-value-added economy. In this context, according to the estimations of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), it has been calculated that until 2017, 23 million potential patients from the USA alone will go to overseas countries with a demand for health services, with an expenditure of 79.5 billion USD.
This sector, which started in ancient times with the journey of people in search of health from today’s Greece, Italy and Central Anatolia or Eastern Anatolia to the Hierapolis (Pamukkale-Denizli) region for its healing waters, is a sector that will always exist even if the content and format change as long as human beings live.
sector.
