Medical Tourism Websites with an Approach to Information Content: A Systematic Review
Abstract
Background: The information content of medical tourism websites could influence the decisions patients and their families make regarding medical centers. This study aimed to investigate the information content of medical tourism websites.
Methods: This systematic review was carried out in 2017. Key terms used for searching consisted of, but not restricted to, medical tourism, information content, information needs, and medical tourism website. The terms were searched on PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Embase, ProQuest and Cochrane. One hundred and ninety-two articles out of 1185 retrieved were duplicated and removed from the study. Titles and abstracts of the remaining identified studies were scanned considering the aim of the study. Finally, 31 relevant studies were included in the study.
Results: The information content of medical tourism websites can be grouped into three main categories including general information (with six subgroups), medical information (with eight subgroups) and tourism information (with one subgroup). The subgroups include information about medical centers, target country, costs and insurance, contact details, website information, photo galleries, the quality of services, trustworthiness, the quality of supportive services, risks, patient rights, physicians and their specialties, and patient instructions for receiving medical and tourism services.
Conclusion: The medical tourism websites should provide a wide range of information. Considering the important role of medical tourism websites in meeting patients’ information needs, the relevant bodies should improve the information content of medical tourism websites to help patients to make their decisions reliably.
1. Dupeyras A, MacCallum N (2013). Indicators for Measuring Competitiveness in Tourism: A Guid-ance Document. OECD Tourism Papers.
2. World Travel & Tourism Council (2016). World Travel & Tourism Economic Impact. Available from: https://www.wttc.org/
3. Carrera PM, Bridges JF (2006). Globalization and healthcare: understanding health and medical tourism. Expert Rev Pharmacoecon Outcomes Res, 6(4):447-54.
4. Lunt N, Carrera P (2010). Medical tourism: assessing the evidence on treatment abroad. Maturitas, 66:27-32.
5. York D (2008). Medical tourism: the trend toward outsourcing medical procedures to foreign coun-tries. J Contin Educ Health Prof, 28(2):99-102.
6. Sarantopoulos J, Vickyb K, Geitona M (2014). A Supply Side Investigation of Medical Tourism and ICT Use in Greece. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sci-ences, (148):370-7.
7. Glinos AI, Baeten R (2006). A Literature Review of Cross-Border patients Mobility in the European Union. Available from: http://www.ose.be
8. Yoon HS, Cho SW, Sugumaran V (2011). A Service System Design to Support Medical Tourism in South Korea. CONF-IRM.
9. Helble M (2011). The movement of patients across borders: Challenges and opportunities for public health. Bull World Health Organ, 89(1):68-72.
10. Ayoubian A, Tourani S, HashemiDehaghi Z (2013). Medical Tourism Attraction of Tehran Hospitals. Int J Travel Med Glob Health, 1(2):95-8.
11. Samadbeik M, Asadi H, Mohseni M, et al (2017). Designing a Medical Tourism Website: A Qualita-tive Study. Iran J Public Health, 46(2):249-57.
12. Lee H, Wright K, O’Connor M, et al (2014). Framing medical tourism: An analysis of persuasive ap-peals, risks and benefits, and new media features of medical tourism broker websites. Health Com-mun, 29(7):637-45.
13. Lunt N, Hardey M, Mannion R (2010). Nip, Tuck and Click: Medical Tourism and the Emergence of Web-Based Health Information. Open Med In-form J, 4:1-11.
14. Loncaric D, Basan L, Jurkovic M (2013). Websites as tool for promotion of health tourism offering in Croatian speciality hospitals and health resorts. Re-cent advances in business management and marketing, 265-70.
15. Standing C, Tang-Taye J-P, Boyer M (2014). The Impact of the Internet in Travel and Tourism: A Research Review 2001–2010. J Travel Tour Mark, 31(1):82-113.
16. Moghavvemi S, Ormond M, Musa G, et al (2017). Connecting with prospective medical tourists online: A cross-sectional analysis of private hospi-tal websites promoting medical tourism in India, Malaysia and Thailand. Tourism Management, 58:154-63.
17. Ngamvichaikit A, Beise-Zee R (2014). Communica-tion needs of medical tourists: an exploratory study in Thailand. International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, 8(1):98-117.
18. Wagle S (2013). Web-based medical facilitators in medical tourism: the third party in decision-making. Indian J Med Ethics, 10(1):28-33.
19. Kim WG, Lee HY (2004). Comparison of Web Ser-vice Quality Between Online Travel Agencies and Online Travel Suppliers. J Travel Tour Mark, 17(2-3): 105-16.
20. Kashihara H, Nakayama T, Hatta T, et al (2016). Evaluating the Quality of Website Information of Private-Practice Clinics Offering Cell Therapies in Japan. Interact J Med Res, 5(2).
21. Mason A, Wright KB (2011). Framing Medical Tour-ism: An Examination of Appeal, Risk, Convales-cence, Accreditation, and Interactivity in Medical Tourism Web Sites. J Health Commun, 16(2):163-77.
22. Maguire Á, Bussmann S, Meier zu Köcker C, et al (2016). Raising concern about the information provided on medical travel agency websites: A place for policy. Health Policy and Technology, 5(4):414-422.
23. Rangraz Jeddi F, Chopannejad S (2017). A Systematic Review of the Content of Medical Tourism Web-sites and Their Evaluative Criteria. Research Journal of Pharmaceutical, Biological and Chemical Sciences, 8(2):1440-52.
24. Crooks VA, Turner L, Snyder J, et al (2011). Promot-ing medical tourism to India: Messages, images, and the marketing of international patient travel. Social Science & Medicine, 72:726-32.
25. Frederick JR, Gan LL (2015). East-West differences among medical tourism facilitators' websites. Jour-nal of Destination Marketing & Management, 4(2):98-109.
26. Smith P, Forgione D (2007). Global Outsourcing of Healthcare: A Medical Tourism Decision Model. JITCAR, 9(3):19-30.
27. Gan LL, Frederick JR (2011). Medical tourism facilita-tors: Patterns of service differentiation. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 17(3):165-83.
28. Moslehifar MA, Ibrahim NA, Sandaran SC (2016). Assessing the quality of trust features on website content of top hospitals for medical tourism con-sumers. Jurnal Komunikasi: Malaysian Journal of Communication, 32(1).
29. Turner L (2011). Canadian medical tourism compa-nies exited the marketplace: Content analysis of websites used to market transnational medical travel. Glob Health, 7:40.
30. Debata BR, Patnaik B, Mahapatra SS, et al (2012). An integrated approach for service quality improve-ment in medical tourism: An Indian perspective. Int J Services and Operations Management, 13(1):119-45.
31. Hohm C, Snyder J (2015). “It Was the Best Decision of My Life”: a thematic content analysis of former medical tourists’ patient testimonials. BMC Medical Ethics, 16:8.
32. Santoro A, Silenzi A, Ricciardi W, et al (2015). Obtain-ing health care in another European Union Member State: how easy is it to find relevant in-formation? Eur J Public Health, 25(1):29-31.
33. Cormany D, Baloglu S (2011). Medical travel facilitator websites: an exploraatory study of web page con-tent and services offered to the prospective medi-cal tourist. Tourism Management, 32(4):709-16.
34. Lunt N, Carrera P (2011). Systematic review of web-sites for prospective medical tourists. Tourism Re-view, 66(1):57-67.
35. Jun J, OH KM (2015). Framing Risks and Benefits of Medical Tourism: A Content Analysis of Med-ical Tourism Coverage in Korean American Community Newspapers. J Health Commun, 20:720-7.
36. Crooks VA, Kingsbury P, Snyder J, et al (2010). What is known about the patients experience of medical tourism? a scoping review. BMC Health Serv Res, 10:266.
37. Lunt N, Smith R, Exworthy M, et al (2011). Medical Tourism: Treatments, Markets and Health Sys-tem. Implications: A scoping review: Directorate for employment, labour and social affairs. OECD; 2011. https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/48723982.pdf
38. Chen Y, Lee J (2014). Web-Based Information Sys-tem Construction of Medical Tourism in South Korea. Frontier and Future Development of In-formation Technology in Medicine and Educa-tion, p. 2735-41.
39. Khan M, Chelliah S, Haron M (2016). International Patients’ Travel Decision Making Process-A Conceptual Framework. Iran J Public Health, 45(2):134-45.
40. Kim S (2016). Determinants of Online Information Credibility: A Case of Korean Medical Tourism Industry. IJAER, 11(2):1062-8.
41. Altin U, Bektas G, Ante Z, et al (2012). The interna-tional patients portfolio and marketing of Turkish health tourism. 8th International Strategic Man-agement Conference Procedia - Social and Be-havioral Sciences.
42. Prakash M, Tyagi N, Devrath R (2011). A study of problems and challenges faced by medical tourists visiting India. Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management.
43. Keystone JS, Kozarsky PE, Freedman DO (2001). Internet and computer-based resources for travel medicine practitioners. Clin Infect Dis, 32(5):757-65.
44. Di lorio C, Carinci F, Brillante M, et al (2013). Cross-border flow of health information: is ‘privacy by design’ enough? Privacy performance assessment in EUBIROD. Eur J Public Health, 23(2):247-53.
45. Dalstrom M (2013). Medical travel facilitators: con-necting patients and providers in a globalized world. Anthropol Med, 20(1):24-35.
46. Biesa W, Zachariab L (2007). Medical tourism: Out-sourcing surgery. Mathematical and Computer Model-ling, 46:1144-59.
47. Enderwick P, Nagar S (2011). The competitive chal-lenge of emerging markets: the case of medical tourism. International Journal of Emerging Markets, 6(4):329-50.
48. Kácha O, Kovács BE, McCarthy C, et al (2016). An Approach to establishing international Quality standards for Medical travel. Front Public Health, 4:29.
49. Sultana S, Haque A, Momen A, et al (2014). Factors affecting the attractiveness of medical tourism des-tination: an empirical study on India- review article. Iran J Public Health, 43(7):867-76.
50. Price RA, Elliott MN, Zaslavsky AM, et al (2014). Ex-amining the Role of Patient Experience Surveys in Measuring Health Care Quality. Med Care Res Rev, 71(5):522-54.
51. Tabrizi J, Gharibi F, Wilson A (2011). Advantages and disadvantages of health care accreditation models. Health Promot Perspect, 1(1):1-31.
2. World Travel & Tourism Council (2016). World Travel & Tourism Economic Impact. Available from: https://www.wttc.org/
3. Carrera PM, Bridges JF (2006). Globalization and healthcare: understanding health and medical tourism. Expert Rev Pharmacoecon Outcomes Res, 6(4):447-54.
4. Lunt N, Carrera P (2010). Medical tourism: assessing the evidence on treatment abroad. Maturitas, 66:27-32.
5. York D (2008). Medical tourism: the trend toward outsourcing medical procedures to foreign coun-tries. J Contin Educ Health Prof, 28(2):99-102.
6. Sarantopoulos J, Vickyb K, Geitona M (2014). A Supply Side Investigation of Medical Tourism and ICT Use in Greece. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sci-ences, (148):370-7.
7. Glinos AI, Baeten R (2006). A Literature Review of Cross-Border patients Mobility in the European Union. Available from: http://www.ose.be
8. Yoon HS, Cho SW, Sugumaran V (2011). A Service System Design to Support Medical Tourism in South Korea. CONF-IRM.
9. Helble M (2011). The movement of patients across borders: Challenges and opportunities for public health. Bull World Health Organ, 89(1):68-72.
10. Ayoubian A, Tourani S, HashemiDehaghi Z (2013). Medical Tourism Attraction of Tehran Hospitals. Int J Travel Med Glob Health, 1(2):95-8.
11. Samadbeik M, Asadi H, Mohseni M, et al (2017). Designing a Medical Tourism Website: A Qualita-tive Study. Iran J Public Health, 46(2):249-57.
12. Lee H, Wright K, O’Connor M, et al (2014). Framing medical tourism: An analysis of persuasive ap-peals, risks and benefits, and new media features of medical tourism broker websites. Health Com-mun, 29(7):637-45.
13. Lunt N, Hardey M, Mannion R (2010). Nip, Tuck and Click: Medical Tourism and the Emergence of Web-Based Health Information. Open Med In-form J, 4:1-11.
14. Loncaric D, Basan L, Jurkovic M (2013). Websites as tool for promotion of health tourism offering in Croatian speciality hospitals and health resorts. Re-cent advances in business management and marketing, 265-70.
15. Standing C, Tang-Taye J-P, Boyer M (2014). The Impact of the Internet in Travel and Tourism: A Research Review 2001–2010. J Travel Tour Mark, 31(1):82-113.
16. Moghavvemi S, Ormond M, Musa G, et al (2017). Connecting with prospective medical tourists online: A cross-sectional analysis of private hospi-tal websites promoting medical tourism in India, Malaysia and Thailand. Tourism Management, 58:154-63.
17. Ngamvichaikit A, Beise-Zee R (2014). Communica-tion needs of medical tourists: an exploratory study in Thailand. International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, 8(1):98-117.
18. Wagle S (2013). Web-based medical facilitators in medical tourism: the third party in decision-making. Indian J Med Ethics, 10(1):28-33.
19. Kim WG, Lee HY (2004). Comparison of Web Ser-vice Quality Between Online Travel Agencies and Online Travel Suppliers. J Travel Tour Mark, 17(2-3): 105-16.
20. Kashihara H, Nakayama T, Hatta T, et al (2016). Evaluating the Quality of Website Information of Private-Practice Clinics Offering Cell Therapies in Japan. Interact J Med Res, 5(2).
21. Mason A, Wright KB (2011). Framing Medical Tour-ism: An Examination of Appeal, Risk, Convales-cence, Accreditation, and Interactivity in Medical Tourism Web Sites. J Health Commun, 16(2):163-77.
22. Maguire Á, Bussmann S, Meier zu Köcker C, et al (2016). Raising concern about the information provided on medical travel agency websites: A place for policy. Health Policy and Technology, 5(4):414-422.
23. Rangraz Jeddi F, Chopannejad S (2017). A Systematic Review of the Content of Medical Tourism Web-sites and Their Evaluative Criteria. Research Journal of Pharmaceutical, Biological and Chemical Sciences, 8(2):1440-52.
24. Crooks VA, Turner L, Snyder J, et al (2011). Promot-ing medical tourism to India: Messages, images, and the marketing of international patient travel. Social Science & Medicine, 72:726-32.
25. Frederick JR, Gan LL (2015). East-West differences among medical tourism facilitators' websites. Jour-nal of Destination Marketing & Management, 4(2):98-109.
26. Smith P, Forgione D (2007). Global Outsourcing of Healthcare: A Medical Tourism Decision Model. JITCAR, 9(3):19-30.
27. Gan LL, Frederick JR (2011). Medical tourism facilita-tors: Patterns of service differentiation. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 17(3):165-83.
28. Moslehifar MA, Ibrahim NA, Sandaran SC (2016). Assessing the quality of trust features on website content of top hospitals for medical tourism con-sumers. Jurnal Komunikasi: Malaysian Journal of Communication, 32(1).
29. Turner L (2011). Canadian medical tourism compa-nies exited the marketplace: Content analysis of websites used to market transnational medical travel. Glob Health, 7:40.
30. Debata BR, Patnaik B, Mahapatra SS, et al (2012). An integrated approach for service quality improve-ment in medical tourism: An Indian perspective. Int J Services and Operations Management, 13(1):119-45.
31. Hohm C, Snyder J (2015). “It Was the Best Decision of My Life”: a thematic content analysis of former medical tourists’ patient testimonials. BMC Medical Ethics, 16:8.
32. Santoro A, Silenzi A, Ricciardi W, et al (2015). Obtain-ing health care in another European Union Member State: how easy is it to find relevant in-formation? Eur J Public Health, 25(1):29-31.
33. Cormany D, Baloglu S (2011). Medical travel facilitator websites: an exploraatory study of web page con-tent and services offered to the prospective medi-cal tourist. Tourism Management, 32(4):709-16.
34. Lunt N, Carrera P (2011). Systematic review of web-sites for prospective medical tourists. Tourism Re-view, 66(1):57-67.
35. Jun J, OH KM (2015). Framing Risks and Benefits of Medical Tourism: A Content Analysis of Med-ical Tourism Coverage in Korean American Community Newspapers. J Health Commun, 20:720-7.
36. Crooks VA, Kingsbury P, Snyder J, et al (2010). What is known about the patients experience of medical tourism? a scoping review. BMC Health Serv Res, 10:266.
37. Lunt N, Smith R, Exworthy M, et al (2011). Medical Tourism: Treatments, Markets and Health Sys-tem. Implications: A scoping review: Directorate for employment, labour and social affairs. OECD; 2011. https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/48723982.pdf
38. Chen Y, Lee J (2014). Web-Based Information Sys-tem Construction of Medical Tourism in South Korea. Frontier and Future Development of In-formation Technology in Medicine and Educa-tion, p. 2735-41.
39. Khan M, Chelliah S, Haron M (2016). International Patients’ Travel Decision Making Process-A Conceptual Framework. Iran J Public Health, 45(2):134-45.
40. Kim S (2016). Determinants of Online Information Credibility: A Case of Korean Medical Tourism Industry. IJAER, 11(2):1062-8.
41. Altin U, Bektas G, Ante Z, et al (2012). The interna-tional patients portfolio and marketing of Turkish health tourism. 8th International Strategic Man-agement Conference Procedia - Social and Be-havioral Sciences.
42. Prakash M, Tyagi N, Devrath R (2011). A study of problems and challenges faced by medical tourists visiting India. Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management.
43. Keystone JS, Kozarsky PE, Freedman DO (2001). Internet and computer-based resources for travel medicine practitioners. Clin Infect Dis, 32(5):757-65.
44. Di lorio C, Carinci F, Brillante M, et al (2013). Cross-border flow of health information: is ‘privacy by design’ enough? Privacy performance assessment in EUBIROD. Eur J Public Health, 23(2):247-53.
45. Dalstrom M (2013). Medical travel facilitators: con-necting patients and providers in a globalized world. Anthropol Med, 20(1):24-35.
46. Biesa W, Zachariab L (2007). Medical tourism: Out-sourcing surgery. Mathematical and Computer Model-ling, 46:1144-59.
47. Enderwick P, Nagar S (2011). The competitive chal-lenge of emerging markets: the case of medical tourism. International Journal of Emerging Markets, 6(4):329-50.
48. Kácha O, Kovács BE, McCarthy C, et al (2016). An Approach to establishing international Quality standards for Medical travel. Front Public Health, 4:29.
49. Sultana S, Haque A, Momen A, et al (2014). Factors affecting the attractiveness of medical tourism des-tination: an empirical study on India- review article. Iran J Public Health, 43(7):867-76.
50. Price RA, Elliott MN, Zaslavsky AM, et al (2014). Ex-amining the Role of Patient Experience Surveys in Measuring Health Care Quality. Med Care Res Rev, 71(5):522-54.
51. Tabrizi J, Gharibi F, Wilson A (2011). Advantages and disadvantages of health care accreditation models. Health Promot Perspect, 1(1):1-31.
| Files | ||
| Issue | Vol 49 No 6 (2020) | |
| Section | Review Article(s) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.18502/ijph.v49i6.3355 | |
| Keywords | ||
| Information needs; Information content Medical tourism; Medical tourism website | ||
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |
How to Cite
1.
GHADERI-NANSA L, RABIEI R, ASADI F, HOSSEINI A, EMAMI H. Medical Tourism Websites with an Approach to Information Content: A Systematic Review. Iran J Public Health. 2020;49(6):1045-1052.
