Links to academic and policy references on medical travel

These links sections will be updated from time to time, so please check back. Meanwhile, I've discovered a continuously revised list of publications on medical travel hosted by Dr Robert Bristow of Westfield State College: http://www.wsc.ma.edu/medicaltourism/medtourbib.htm

General

• Acharyulu, G.V.R.K. & Reddy, B. Krishna. (2004) ‘Hospital Logistics Strategy for Medical Tourism’, presented at Supply Chain Seminar: An International Conference on Logistics, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 10-11 June.
  
• Bennett, Trude (2009) 'Medical Tourism: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?', Intensive workshop on health systems in transition, University of Malaya, 29-30 April.
  
• Bennett, Trude (2009) 'Perspectives', Medical Travel Today, 7 August.
  
• Caballero-Danell, Sara & Mugomba, Chipo (2006) 'Medical tourism and its entrepreneurial opportunities - A conceptual framework for entry into the industry', Tourism and Hospitality Management, Masters thesis no. 2006:91, School of Business, Economics and Law, Goteborg University, Sweden.
  
• Carrera, Percivil M. & Bridges, John F.P. (2006) 'Globalization and healthcare: Understanding health and medical tourism', Expert Review of Pharmaceutics Outcomes, 6(4): 447-454.
  
• Connell, John (2006) 'Medical tourism: Sea, sun, sand and... surgery', Tourism Management, 27.
• Cortez, Nathan (2008) 'Patients without borders: The emerging global market for patients and the evolution of modern health care', Indiana Law Journal, 83, SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 00-24.
• Brooker, Ed & Go, Frank M. (????) ‘Health care tourism – A classic example of disruptive innovation’
• Mattoo, Aaditya & Rathindran, Randeep (2005) 'Does health insurance impede trade in health care services?', World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper WPS3667.
• Mattoo, Aaditya & Rathindran, Randeep (2006) 'How health insurance inhibits trade in healthcare', Health Affairs, March/April.
• Milstein, Arthur & Smith, Mark (2007) 'Will the surgical world become flat?', Health Affairs, January/February.
  
• Herman, Lior. (2009) 'Assessing international trade in health services', ECIPE Working Paper 03/2009.
• Turner, Leigh (2007) 'First world health care at third world prices': Globalization, bioethics and medical tourism', BioSocieties, 2: 303-325.
  

Asia

• Arunanondchai, Jutamas & Fink, Carsten (2007) 'Trade in health services in the ASEAN region', Health Promotion International, 21(S1).
  
• Chee, Heng Leng (2007) 'Medical Tourism in Malaysia: International Movement of Healthcare Consumers and the Commodification of Healthcare', ARI Working Paper Series, no. 83, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
• Chinai, Rupa & Goswami, Rahul (2007) 'Medical visas mark growth of Indian medical tourism', Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 95(3), March.
• Henderson, Joan C. (2003) 'Healthcare tourism in Southeast Asia', Tourism Review International, 7(3-4): 111-121.
• Ono, Mayumi (2008) 'Long-Stay Tourism and International Retirement Migration: Japanese Retirees in Malaysia', Yamashita et al., eds. Transnational Migration in East Asia
  Senri Ethnological Reports, 77: 151–162.
• Richman, Barak D., Udayakumar, Krishna, Mitchell, Will & Schulman, Kevin A. (2008) 'Lessons from India in organizational innovation: A tale of two heart hospitals', Health Affairs, 27, no. 5 (2008): 1260-1270.
• Tata, Srinivas (2007) 'Medical travel in Asia and the Pacific: Challenges and Opportunities', United National Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
  
• Yap, Chin Huat Jason (2006) 'Medical Tourism / Medical Travel - Part One' and 'Medical Tourism / Medical Travel - Part Two', SMA News, May and July, 38(5) and 38(7).
  

Americas

• Altman, Stuart H., Shactman, David & Eilat, Efra (2006) 'Could US hospitals go the way of US airlines?', Health Affairs, January/February.
• Jenner, Elizabeth Anne (2008) 'Unsettled borders of care: Medical tourism as a new dimension in America's health care crisis', Research in the Sociology of Health Care, 26: 235-249.
  
• Milstein, Arthur & Smith, Mark (2006) 'America's new refugees - Seeking afforable surgery offshore', New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 355:1637-1640, 19 Oct.
• Scandlen, Greg(2005) 'Consumer-Driven Health Care: Just A Tweak Or A Revolution?', Health Affairs, November/December.
  
• Sood, Arun & Cox, Erin (2008) 'Medical tourism: A strategy for containing health care cost increases and immigration pull', Working Papers in Global Studies, 2, September, Center for Global Studies, George Mason University.
  

European Union

• Bertinato, Luigi & Canapero, Marina (2008) 'Health tourism. The growth phenomenon', Asian Hospital and Healthcare Management, Issue 16.
• European Union (2006) 'Position paper on cross-border healthcare'.
• House of Lords (2007) 'Cross-border health services in the European Union - Report with evidence', European Union Committee, 8th Report of Session 2006-2007, HL Paper 48.
  
• Leidl, Reiner & Rhodes, Grant (1997) 'Cross-border healthcare in the European Union: An introduction', European Journal of Public Health, 7 (3 supplement): 1-3.
  
• Morgan, Derek (2003) 'Medical tourism: Ethical baggage and legal currencies', Medical Ethics Tomorrow, United Kingdom, 3 December.
  
• Pennings, Guido (2004) 'Legal harmonisation and reproductive tourism in Europe', Human Reproduction, 19(12): 2689-2694.

Middle East

• Ghods, A.J. & Nasrollahzadeh, D. (2005) 'Transplant tourism and the Iranian model of renal transplantation program: ethical considerations', Experimental and Clinical Transplantation, Dec., 3(2): 351-354.
• Kangas, Beth (2002) 'Therapeutic itineraries in a global world: Yemenis and their search for biomedical treatment abroad', Medical Anthropology, 21: 35-78.
  

Medical Tourism City

An interesting new online community called 'Medical Tourism City' has recently sprouted up: http://www.medicaltourismcity.com/. It seems to be pretty interactive and includes groups, forums, chat space, blogs, events postings and the like. There's a group dedicated to Medical Tourism Research, set up by Prof David Vequist (find out more about his group's work at http://www.medicaltourismresearch.org), and one on Ethics in Medical Tourism, set up by Dr Steve Green, a physician involved in the Trent Accreditation Scheme for Hospitals.

Visual/audio reports on medical travel

• 'Can't Go Home: Americans in Canada Share Health Care Stories', 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TWuO5dBYjo
• 'Medical Exiles', The Current, CBC Radio, 25/9/2009: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2009/09/25/september-25-2009/
  
• Medical Tourism Association's Angels Overseas documentary, Dec. 2009: http://medicaltourismassociation.com/documentary.html
• Medical Tourism, Australia Talks, ABC Radio National, 15/10/2009: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/australiatalks/stories/2009/2713003.htm
• Medical Tourism in Asia, interview with Dr Andrea Whittaker, University of Melbourne's Up Close radio programme, Episode 13: http://upclose.unimelb.edu.au/episode/13
• Healthcare and transnational mobility in Asia, roundtable including Dr Chee Heng Leng's talk on 'Medical Tourism', April 2008: http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/publication_details.asp?pubtypeid=AU&pubid=1285
• Josef Woodman's address to the APHM/ISQua/ASQua Conference in Kuala Lumpur for the launch of the Patients Beyond Borders - Malaysian Edition, July 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2anJAYbBA5Q&feature=related
• CNN's Sanjay Gupta reporting on medical tourism to India. Video available at: http://medicaltourism.com/video-detail.php?video=afpAneB7Br8&lang=en
• Riz Khan does a great weekly show on Aljazeera's English language channel, and on 8 September 08 it was dedicated to 'medical tourism', with guests Joe Woodman, Wise Young and Vishal Bali. Check out: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2008/09/200896143547130459.html
• Devon Herrick (moderator), Milica Bookman and Rudy Rupak, 'Global Health Care: Medical Travel and Medical Outsourcing', National Association for Business Economics, Health Economics Roundtable Teleconference, 25 July 2007. Audivailable at http://www.nabe.com/podcasts/070725hrt.mp3.
• US Senate Special Committee on Aging Hearing, 'The Globalization of Health Care: Can Medical Tourism Reduce Health Care Costs?', 27 June 2006. Webcast available at http://aging.senate.gov/hearing_detail.cfm?id=270728&
• 'A passage to India for medical tourism', National Public Radio's All Things Considered, 26 March 2005. Available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4562670
  
• 'Medical tourism', ABC National Radio's Background Briefing, 20 February 2005. Transcript available at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s1308505.htm
  

The Death of Mr Lazarescu

The dark Romanian comedy, The Death of Mr Lazarescu, directed by Cristi Piui, is a stellar film I had the fortune to watch last night. It addresses a range of timely issues pertinent to those of us concerned with 'medical mobilities' -- demonstrating the life-threatening confusion of being shuttled back and forth within a national healthcare system in disarray, highlighting the power struggles and egotistical posturing that plague the medical profession, and questioning whether individuals are responsible for taking care of their health in order to avoid burdening overloaded health systems.