‘Medical Tourism: Opportunities and Challenges for India’

India's relatively developing medical tourism segment has been anointed by healthcare and tourism industry pundits as the next 'best' thing for the country. According to a McKinsey report, India is poised to generate business worth USD 2.2 billion by 2010, however there are plenty of challenges that need to be addressed for India to become the world's preferred healthcare destination. Prominent among them being the need for proper accreditation and requisite standardisation systems in place, a tripartite synergy between hospitals, tour operators and respective state governments. These were some of the findings at the seminar titled, 'Medical Tourism: Opportunities and Challenges for India' organised by Express Healthcare Management and Express Travel and Tourism, bringing the two sides of the medical tourism industry together for the first time in the country. NV Ramamurthy, editor, Express Healthcare Management welcomed the delegates and the panelists. He spoke about the various challenges impeding the growth of the medical tourism industry and emphasised the need for a synergy between hospitals, state government and international tour operators.

The panelists for the session comprised Dr R V Karanjekar, chief executive officer, Dr D Y Patil Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai; Anupam Verma, director administration at PD Hinduja National Hospital, Mumbai; Joy Chakraborty, deputy administrator at Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre; Gour Kanjilal, regional director (Western & Central Region), Indiatourism, Mumbai and Mahendra Jain, commissioner of tourism, government of Karnataka.

In 2004, India treated and cared for 1.8 lakh patients. This number is poised for substantial growth - 25-30 per cent in 2005. The panel agreed that India's main USP in this regard was the prospect of low-cost treatment by highly professional

doctors. According to Dr RV Karanjekar, India will have to project itself as being a holistic medical destination to get an edge over other countries. "India offers not just treatment but spiritual and mental healing as well. We need to club together a couple of 'pathies' because we have a very strong base of alternative healing therapies like yoga, naturopathy, ayurveda, etc," said Dr Karanjekar.

The panelists echoed yet another imperative that creating awareness about India's facilities is a must to establish credibility in foreign markets. Joy Chakraborty further suggested that the standardisation of a price band for graded hospitals and a quality assurance model should be taken up immediately to take medical tourism ahead. "CRISIL and ICRA have started something on price bands but are facing few challenges at the moment. What we can do, is try and follow the Thailand model. Thailand first developed its standards as per Joint Commissioner International (JSI) which helped them to get approval from NHS of UK. So convincing medical insurance companies was not a problem." Talking about initiatives that can help in generating the right exposure, Mahendra Jain said, "It is time we create a database on the facilities on offer, the number of patients received and from which market, reason for choosing India, their length of stay, etc. These data can provide pointers to help us in devising country-specific promotional strategies."

Gour Kanjilal said, a joint task force on medical tourism has already been set up by ministry of tourism in collaboration with ministry of health which will look into quality assurance, standardisation of price, global networking and improving visibility. According to Kanjilal, talks need to be held with the source-market countries to sort out insurance policy guidelines.

At the same time, the government should introduce a medical visa to facilitate long-stay he opined. Anupam Verma very ably moderated the two hour seminar and responded to queries from the doctors and the tour operators.

As the hon secretary of Maharashtra Medical Tourism Council formed last year in collaboration with FICCI, he has been actively involved in promoting the state as the preferred medical tourism destination abroad.