Global Healthcare Marketplace

Call it medical tourism, healthcare outsourcing, medical value travel, medical travel, the industry is feeding the need of people who want more options and control on how and where they undergo a treatment and we ( stakeholders in the medical tourism domain) are fuelling this need by commoditizing healthcare. The provider and the consumer may be separated by an ocean or a few blocks but adoption of utilities available on internet is changing the way informed patient looks for and takes up services in healthcare.

I am trying to analyze the changes that might be brought about in the healthcare industry as people use the internet and technology for their health related services and start to travel in large numbers to providers beyond their immediate vicinity for treatment.

Many of the points being discussed have been around for the last few years and we are going to see is an increased adoptability leading to these technologies and services getting even more powerful to cater to the rising demand.

Online Hospital information System

As people start using the internet for identification, communication and transactions, it becomes imperative for a part of the hospital Information system to migrate online to cater to the requirements. This could be a shared platform where multiple hospitals globally come on board, network with the referrers and patients in different countries, manage relationships and facilitate transactions.

Patient portals

With the patients having the same access to information as doctors, this growing community of net savvy patients will be more demanding and will see the physicians as partners.

The patient portal of tomorrow (with search capabilities increasing) will give filtered information finely tailored to the requirements of the user. People now have control in creating, maintaining and permitting multiple care givers to access their medical records online
( ex- Healthvault by Microsoft and googlehealth). When more and more hospitals take up these services as a result of the demand created by the informed patient, these technologies will grow powerful. These patient portals will grow even more powerful when they get combined to an online communication system with the caregiver, and gets connected to intelligent wireless monitoring systems.

Telediagnosis, Telemonitoring and remote consulting

One of the areas that would grow as a result of medical tourism is going to be telemedicine. As people start to travel more there will be a requirement for diagnosis and treatment planning even before they embark on the journey. So we will see more products and services related to telemedicine similar to Cisco’s Healthpod which allows remote diagnosis and can transfer of data directly to the hospital in a different location. With these new age intelligent devices that help in remote monitoring and reporting using wireless technologies, we have a new kind of patient who is always in touch with a healthcare service provider 24/7.

One question… when remote robotic surgery becomes more accepted, with surgeons operating on patients in another continent using robotic arms, or better still think of an unassisted remote robotic surgery where an intelligent robot running on a software program that uses data collected from surgeries done by hundreds of surgeons globally to perform the surgery without human intervention. Will this again fall under medical tourism?

I beleive the stake holders of the medical tourism domain will also fuel the acceptance of these technologies.

Collaborative service provider

The medical tourism facilitator who has partnership arrangements with multiple hospitals will be able to connect online with these hospitals, insurance companies, patients and employers. The role of this business sector will continue to grow and the scope will always be on the increase. They will be seen as a partner in healthcare and will be responsible for wellness as well as management of illness. These collaborative service providers will also have a role of deciphering the information transmitted by the wireless devises used for healthcare by the customer, advising lifestyle changes, ordering lab and other tests, interfacing with the hospital post treatment and facilitating aftercare. So the medical tourism company will continue to be a collaborative service that acts as an intermediary for the hospital, insurance company and the employer while acting as an advisory to the patient.

Voices of patients in a networked world

Social networking is a valuable tool for the growth of medical tourism industry. The number of communication channels that open up can go close to the square ( n*(n-1))of the number of users on the network. The patient portals might also have the social networking platform inbuilt and could be networked with existing networking platforms. These will become powerful forces as communication channels between patients that have undergone a treatment and potential patients looking out for treatment options open up. This network, when it reaches a critical mass will have the capability to control opinions in the healthcare industry. Tracking these communication channels, learning from them, taking damage control measures if necessary, utilizing these networking channels will become an important marketing challenge in the days to come. These networked voices also get indexed on search engines too making it a force to reckon with.

Commonality of processes internationally

As people start travelling to different locations for treatment, it becomes imperative that the processes and protocols are standardized for ease of use. Common clinical protocols, training, and global compatibility of equipment could be the outcomes as people travel more for health related purposes.

Transparency

Patients need transparency to understand the service offerings and make choices. Independent audit bodies could take up the responsibility of auditing the content displayed by the multiple portals where hospital reported data is displayed and the data would be provided by the hospitals themselves


We as stakeholders in the domain will pass through pretty exciting times ahead. The roles we are playing will increase in its scope and changes in the domain will call for innovation and creation of new roles to support the requirements of the global healthcare marketplace

benosh@emedsol.biz