A review on the functionality of medical tourism websites

The current interest in Health Tourism (HT) trend to focus on foreign patients or individuals travelling internationally for medical reasons or to enhance their state of well-being, typically paid out-of pocket. Specifically, Joint Commission International (JCI) and British Standards Institute (BSI)...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wong, Lai Yoong, Sulaiman, Noralfishah, David, Baldry
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/5434/
http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/5434/1/FPTP_Postgraduate_paper_(WONG_LAI_YOONG).pdf
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Summary:The current interest in Health Tourism (HT) trend to focus on foreign patients or individuals travelling internationally for medical reasons or to enhance their state of well-being, typically paid out-of pocket. Specifically, Joint Commission International (JCI) and British Standards Institute (BSI) accreditation health care organisation in Brazil, Costa Rica, Hungary, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Mexico started to perform high quality and safety health care worldwide in order to achieve a higher standard of patient care. In 2013, Malaysia was recognised as top five destination in the world for health tourism and Prince Court Medical Centre (PCMC) in Kuala Lumpur was selected as the top accredited hospital which provides medical tourists with outstanding care beyond standard clinical protocols. Reports estimated that Malaysia is welcoming 583,000 medical tourists and generated more than RM 600 million revenue by the end of 2012. Definitely, these positive statistics indicate a very promising and a bright future for Malaysia Medical Tourism Industry (MTI). Despite there is an increasing number of Medical Websites (MTwebs) used to introduce and promote health services to prospective patients, question still concern about the quality of MTwebs to deliver valuable health information resource in medical sector. Hence, a holistic Internet Marketing Strategy Framework (IMSF) is needed for Medical Tourism Programme in Malaysia (MTP). Therefore, this paper aims to discuss literature reviews on characteristic and functionality of MTwebs.