Arabian Post Staff
Dubai is ranked sixth, ahead of India, in the top ten medical tourism destinations by the the International Healthcare Research Center (IHRC) in 2020-2021 Medical Tourism Index (MTI).
The top ten destinations: Canada, Singapore, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, Dubai, Costa Rica, Israel, Abu Dhabi, and India.
The MTI ranks the American perceptions of 46 international healthcare destinations providing insight into how consumers view 41 criteria within three dimensions including Medical Tourism Industry, Destination Attractiveness, and Quality of Care.
It becomes an important planning tool for industry stakeholders looking to invest, benchmark, and improve market share in medical travel. The new MTI adds five new destinations to the growing list of medical tourism destinations: Czechia, Portugal, Hungary, Greece, and Guatemala. Also released is the 2020-2021 Arab Medical Tourism Index.
The Medical Tourism Index was first created in 2014 and updated for the sector in its 2016-2017 report. The third edition arrives at a critical juncture, where modern healthcare has never been more important, and the future evolution of a young, globalized industry has never been harder to predict.
For this 2020-21 edition, MTI provides a fresh snapshot of each destination by providing geopolitical and demographic information, the current healthcare model for each, and insight into the scope and shape of each destination’s medical tourism industry.
Also new is the MTI Online Data tools. Customers that purchase the report will be able to login to access digital tools like custom graphs and tables for analysis. This will include data from 2020 for comparison with or against previous years.
The novel coronavirus is putting tremendous strain on healthcare systems and world economies, which will alter the size and shape of the medical tourism market in unpredictable ways. Even so, it seems outright impossible that any world event – even one as deadly as COVID-19 – could permanently disable or destroy the medical tourism industry.
As the threat of novel coronavirus becomes less ubiquitous and international travel guidelines return to normal, medical tourism, health tourism, and wellness travel industries all aim to slowly return to pre-2020 levels, particularly as health and wellness seekers look for more cost effective, and safe solutions for their healthcare and wellness needs. Destinations that use the updated MTI to prepare for this inevitable return to normal operation will be well-positioned to reap the rewards of foreign healthcare spending.
Also published on Medium.
