A professional organisation with doctors, healthcare professionals, and patient guides on board, the India Virtual Hospital team is trained to support and help patients manage their medical and surgical care away from home, says Swadeep Srivastava, Managing Partner, India Virtual Hospital, in a conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).
Q. How do you see the growth of medical tourism in India?
As healthcare turns costlier in developed countries, India’s medical tourism market is expected to more than double in size to around $8 billion by 2020 from $3 billion now. The industry grew at a CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) of 15 per cent during 2010-15. It says that cost is a major driver for nearly 80 per cent of medical tourists across the globe. The cost-consciousness factor and availability of accredited facilities have led to emergence of several global medical tourism corridors – Singapore, Thailand, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Mexico and Costa Rica. But among these corridors of health, India has the second – largest number of accredited facilities (after Thailand). Bangladesh and Afghanistan dominate the Indian medical tourism market with approximately 34 per cent share. Similarly, the domestic medical travellers market “ patients travelling from smaller cities to metro cities like Delhi for tertiary care treatment “ is growing at a healthy pace. Our research shows that about 25% of beds are occupied in most hospitals of Delhi by domestic medical travellers. This segment offers huge potential.
As the sector gets more organised with serious players like India Virtual Hospital (IVH) leveraging technology and filling the numerous gaps and challenges to improve the patient treatment journey, sky is the limit for India’s medical tourism market. We are fortunate that the government too is supporting this sector with much – needed reforms. Along with it, AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) is another major attraction for international medical travellers.
Q. How is IVH pegged to tap the medical tourism market of India?
The objective of IVH is to create an organised, professional and tech-oriented process of decision-making by empowering patients with right and relevant information and facilitating them at every step for a smooth and seamless patient care experience. IVH is a tech-enabled specialised Medical Concierge Service addressing the needs of Medical Travellers (domestic & international) looking for quality medical treatments in Indian Hospitals and Health Care Centres. A professional organisation with doctors, healthcare professionals, and patient guides on board, the IVH team is trained to support and help patients manage their medical and surgical care away from home. The robust technology support, with features like electronic medical records, and IVH App, among others, plays an integral role into making the module more efficient and scalable.
We have, for the first time, introduced a concept of Patient Happiness Index, which is calculated by adding up feedback of the patient at all the 5 levels of our support and intervention, which becomes a parameter to judge the success of our care module, along with partner hospitals and doctors and their treatment experience given to patients. Swadeep Srivastava can be contacted at: mp@indiavirtualhospital.com
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