Perspectives for Medical Tourism Development in Portugal's Central Region

The European Directive 2011/24/EU establishes the rules for the access to cross-border healthcare to ensure the mobility of patients and promote cooperation between the different Member States. This study aims to understand its impact and the role that medical tourism can play in the healthcare context in Portugal. On the one hand, it makes a reflection on the challenges arising from its adoption, and, on the other hand, it discusses the possible impacts of its implementation, specifically in two sub-regions of the Central Region, and the role of medical tourism in light of the views of health policymakers and other local and regional stakeholders. The attractive conditions of Portugal translate into a potential destination for medical tourism; however, the transposition of the Directive reveals several weaknesses. Only through the design of a strategic plan of action, necessarily collective, participative, and accountable, that lists the supply, the potential demand, and priority options for the country and for each region, it is possible to effectively develop medical tourism.

Considerations for Stakeholders of Medical Tourism

Several countries are competing for a higher share in the billion dollar medical tourism market, which is expected to reach USD 28 billion by 2024. The situation is as interesting as it can get. A whole new economy has prospered around medical tourism with various stakeholders including patients, hospitals, insurers, medical tourism facilitators, and the government. The concerns of these stakeholders ought to be diverse but should not be diverging for the industry to function appropriately. The motive of this chapter is to review the economy around medical tourism from stakeholder perspectives and enlist the factors to consider while designing business policies.

HRV

The most important factor involved in heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is cardiac input signal, which is achieved in the form of electrocardiogram (ECG). The ECG signal is used for identifying many electrical defects associated with the heart. In this chapter, many issues involved while ECG recording such as type of the recording instrument, various sources of noise, artifacts, and electrical interference from surroundings is presented. Most importantly, this chapter comprises the details about the experimental protocols followed while ECG recording. Also, the brief overview of medical tourism as well as various interpolation methods used for pre-processing of RR intervals are presented in this chapter.

Effects of Stress Management and Healthcare Issues

Modern life is full of hassles, deadlines, frustrations, and demands. Stress is defined as perspective of mind or as mental health disorder. It is of equal importance compared with others in the 21st century. Stress management is a common phenomenon globally. The imbalance of any occasion creates stress. The most significant factors include separated from family, loneliness, fatigue, multi-nationality, limited recreation activity, and dissatisfaction of job opportunity, which tends to cause healthcare issues, especially sleep deprivation and depression. The long-lasting stress causes chronic mental fatigue. It has positive and negative impacts, which depend on situations. Sometimes it plays as a motivating factor for peak performance and great opportunity, or sometimes negative like when a person faces social, physical, organizational, and emotional problems.

Investigation of Alcohol Consumption Determinants in Turkey With Multinomial Probit Model

The main objective of this study is to determine key factors that may have a significant effect on alcohol consumption in Turkey. For this purpose, the cross-sectional data obtained from the Turkish Health Survey conducted in 2010 and 2012 by the Turkish Statistical Institute were analyzed through the multinomial probit model. Results revealed that several key variables were found to be a significant determinant of alcohol consumption, such as gender, age, education, marital status, income, general health status, tooth brushing frequency, situation of violence, fruit consumption frequency, tobacco use, exposure to tobacco smoke, and survey year. It is apparent that alcoholics need help to get rid of an addiction. Therefore, it would be inevitable for governments to intervene through national and international public health authorities. In particular, the ability of governments to design and implement comprehensive prevention strategies that combine the strengths of different policy approaches is critical to success.

Prospects and Challenges of Medical Tourism

Medical tourism has seen rapid growth in the past few years in Manipur from neighboring states as well as countries, particularly Myanmar. Manipur is also trying to be on the medical tourism map of India with eminent medical practitioners across the state trying to take advantage of the Act East Policy of the Indian Government. Manipur witnessed a significant investment in healthcare over the last decade. With the emergence of some of the eminent hospitals and research institutes with advanced technology in the state, the diagnosis of many of the complicated medical problems are done effectively with minimal cost. The prospect looks bright, but challenges such as tag of being a ‘disturbed area' and complex visa procedures for foreign nationals could constraints to the exponential growth of medical tourism in Manipur, especially from neighboring countries. The chapter is an attempt to study the prospects and challenges of medical tourism in Manipur. The study is exploratory in nature with insights from available literature and data from various sources.

Medical Tourism in Visakhapatnam by People of South Odisha

Vishakhapatnam is a coastal city of Andhra Pradesh, one of the commercial hubs of Andhra Pradesh and very near to the south part of Odisha. The city has many super specialty hospitals and is home to various tourist destinations. People of Southern Odisha do not have good medical facilities always rush to Visakhapatnam for even small treatments. Southern Odisha comprises of the following districts: Gajapati, Rayagada, Koraput, Nabrangpur, Malkangiri, and Ganjam. These districts are still deprived of basic medical facilities, and traveling to Visakhapatnam is more suitable than to the capital of Odisha (Bhubaneswar) due to distance. The methodology of this chapter is based on secondary sources such as a published book, journals, reports, articles, newspapers, and online sources. In this chapter, a descriptive method is employed. Primary data was collected from the people staying in various hospitals in Vishakhapatnam for medical purposes.

Travel Motivations of Cancer Patients

Affordable travel costs and technological advances in medical procedures have enabled an increased number of patients visiting medical tourist destinations. Distances are not a barrier to treatment anymore. Moreover, medical studies also mention that travelling in itself can be part of the patient's treatment affecting positively on their condition. This study aims at examining the travel motivations and factors of female breast cancer patients and survivors by applying Iso-Ahola's motivation theory. The theory sorted travel motivations in four categories: personal escaping, interpersonal escaping, personal seeking, and interpersonal seeking. Descriptive analysis of the data obtained from the survey showed that patients travel to create share experiences their families, friends, and new people. Travelling also gives them a positive attitude as makes them feel good about themselves and gives them a sense of hope. Travelling is not about avoiding social conflict within their families or communities nor treating themselves alone to not be a burden to their families.

United Arab Emirates as a Global Medical Tourism Destination

UAE is also known as the fastest-growing medical tourism hub due to its most advanced medical technology, affordable treatments cost, and highly specialized doctors with world-class healthcare services. In this context, the Dubai Health Experience (DXH) is developed by Dubai Health Authority as a brand name for global healthcare and medical tourism, which aims to build up Dubai as a medical tourism hub. Dubai Health Experience (DXH) the United Arab Emirates is also widening its opportunity for the medical tourism market in the Gulf Cooperation Council is a political and economic alliance of six countries in the Arabian Peninsula where UAE is itself member country. In this continuation, Dubai Tourism Strategy 2020 is also a strategic roadmap with the target of attracting 20 million visitors per year by 2020. This chapter will reveal the emerging medical tourism and healthcare trends, healthcare policy of UAE, investment in healthcare and medical tourism, government initiatives, public-private partnership, and key initiatives to achieving sustainable development goals.

Heal and Revive

During the past decade, health and wellness tourism has become one of the top categories of tourism across the globe. On the other hand, academic deliberations are forged about the classifications and elucidations to differentiate the key terms concomitant with the wellness tourism sector. Arguably, due to the high market competition, the majority of the wellness/wellbeing/health tourism products are closely related and used interchangeably. Therefore, this study attempts to discourse the contemporary trends and developments in Kerala. As the forerunner for Ayurveda tourism and as one of the popular wellness tourist destinations, Kerala persists in the top list. Though, compared to other destinations, there are minimal tourism-oriented researcher studies were conducted. To attend this gap, this chapter explores the wellness sector of Kerala in terms of recent trends and developments. Interestingly, the tourism sector of Kerala observed to be dynamic and innovative by combining various tourism attributes offer a unique experience to the visitors.