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With rising healthcare costs in developed countries, medical tourism in India is expected to grow from the current market size of $3 to $7-8 billion by 2020.
Bangladesh and Afghanistan dominate the medical value traveller (MVT) arrivals in India with 34 per cent of the total arrivals followed by patients from Africa, GCC and CIS nations constituting 30 per cent.
A CII-Grant Thornton whitepaper – Transformative Evolution: From Wellness to Medical Wellness Tourism in Kerala – emphasised the need for a marketing campaign with the active government and private sector support to tap a major share from African, Asian and West Asian regions.
However, the report went on to say that Kerala could attract only five per cent of these medical tourists by 2020 even though the State has the potential to increase the overall market share to 10-12 per cent through a focussed marketing strategy.
The whitepaper was launched here on Friday at the fifth edition of Kerala Health Tourism 2015 organised by CII in association with the Kerala Government.
Vrinda Mathur, Partner, emphasised the need for building and upgrading infrastructure for medical value tourism even though the State is one of the most preferred tourist destinations in India.
She told BusinessLine that the building and upgrading infrastructure should meet the criteria that a global patient looks for. This includes cost-competitiveness, gold standards in accreditations, positive clinical outcomes, focussed international patients pathway, and availability of complex surgical multi speciality services.
The key factor driving the medical value tourism in Kerala will be availability of national as well as globally accredited facilities, an area where the State lags behind when compared to Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, NCR and Andhra Pradesh
Accreditations and positive clinical outcomes are often considered the benchmarks for evaluating facilities across the globe and provides a quality conscious patient the confidence and security about positive clinical outcomes, she added.
Grant Thornton India LLP is one of the largest assurance, tax and advisory firms in the country.
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