Medical Tourism: Globalization of Healthcare

Two good articles about Medical tourism, "Importing Competition" and "Operating Profit" have been printed in the latest Economist magazine.


The the short introductory article, "Importing Competition" has the following line:

"At the same time the best hospitals in Asia and Latin America now rival or surpass many hospitals in the rich world for safety and quality."

As I have said before, the biggest hurdle that is impeding medical tourism is the lack of confidence of foreigners in the competence of Indian doctors in the Indian health care setting to provide safe and effective treatment.

People promoting medical tourism should emphasize the quality of care and the safety record of the hospitals. More soundbites on this issue and a little less on the cost savings involved will allay a lot of fears in prospective patients.


The second article, "Operating Profit", tackles many of the issues raised by critics of medical tourism.

Unlike the dozens of articles written about medical tourism everyday, this article breaks away from the routine format and goes deeper into the issues and shows how it will impact the health care systems of the countries involved.

All in all, two good articles. As they say, read the whole thing.



Related Articles on Medical Tourism

Medical Tourism in India Ads being streamed on YouTube

Promoting Medical Tourism in India

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Profit Making Medical Colleges to Be Opened in India

Oh, finally the Govt may loosen its grip on medical colleges!

The Govt may allow medical colleges to be set up as profit making institutions.


Will this mean higher fees for medical students ?

Only people whose IQ is equal to their shoe size would believe that the existing medical colleges are really being run as non profit enterprises. The term 'profit making medical college' is redundant as even now all private medical colleges are making profits, albeit off the records.

All that the present rule does is to keep away people who would like to open a medical college but are not willing to take the risk of making profits off the record. (Ethics/Not worth the risk etc. )

Allowing medical colleges to legitimately make a profit will attract more people to open medical colleges. Even though the initial fees in these colleges might be on the higher side, each additional college will offer more competition to the existing ones and eventually drive down the fees.

If only a few colleges are opened, we will get ripped.


So more the medical colleges, merrier the students :-)



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Medical Tourism in India Ads being streamed on YouTube

A couple of videos on YouTube about patients who did not have health insurance in US and had surgeries in India.


This is about a US patient who had a liver transplant at Apollo Hospital. It also features a couple of US doctors expressing their opinion.




And this one is about Wockhardt Hospital, Bangalore.







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With Digital Pathology, No More Squinting and Peering at the Microscope and Glass Slide

A significant part of pathology consists of squinting your eyes and peering over microscopes, trying hard to make out patterns in the slide.

Digitizing pathology slides and displaying them on large computer screen would make the process of observing slides very convenient. Beyond convenience, there are many other advantages and applications of digitizing pathology slides. 

The developments till now in the emerging filed of Digital Pathology are summed up in this talk titled "The Evolution of Digital Pathology"  by the founder of Aperio.

Probably the most heartening line in the article is 

" I think it’s fair to say that pathologists today acknowledge that the quality of digital slides is more than adequate for most needs." 

For a fee, Aperio scans and converts glass slides into digital slides which can be viewed on the Internet. At charges ranging from $30 to $150 per slide, this service is hardly affordable for most hospitals, especially in countries like India.

But as with all things digital, the cost of this service is expected to fall steeply every few months. (Like the cost of sequencing a human genome )

A couple of weeks ago, GE Healthcare formed an independent company, 'Omnyx', to develop the technologies needed to take digital pathology mainstream. 

The ensuing competition will drive the prices down to affordable levels.

Till then, keep peering at the slide under the microscope.

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For Indian Doctors, Post Graduation to be 4 Years from next year

A news article in Economic Times titled

"For doctors, post graduation now a long & rustic journey"


All postgraduates (private and govt colleges), all over India will have to work for one year in rural area as part of Post graduation, which will now be extended to 4 years.

Every few months the health minister comes up with a crazy idea to make our life miserable, and people in the newspapers keep wondering why doctors emigrate to other countries.

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