Category Archives: Others

Medical tourism generates over JD1 billion in 2014 — PHA

Posted on January 21, 2015 | Comments Off on Medical tourism generates over JD1 billion in 2014 — PHA

Amman :

A total of 250,000 patients from abroad came to Jordan for treatment in 2014, a number that is almost similar to the year before, according to the Private Hospitals Association (PHA).

Although the figures are not final as further studies are being conducted, PHA President Fawzi Hammouri said each patient was escorted by two people, with the total number of escorts standing at around half-a-million.

In an interview with The Jordan Times, Hammouri said medical tourism generated more than JD1 billion last year. These revenues include patients’ expenditure on medical procedures, accommodations, transportation and other expenses.

However, several challenges still face the sector and affect the Kingdom’s competitiveness as a regional medical hub, the PHA president added.

Topping these challenges, he explained, is the increase in operating expenses due to the hike in electricity tariffs, which have doubled over the past four years, from 113 fils per kilowatt hour in 2011 to 272 fils per kilowatt hour now.

In addition, hospitals and medical centres were forced to increase staff wages to counter the brain drain, as the majority of medics are offered better salaries in Gulf countries.

Another reason for the increase in operating expenses is the increase in social security subscriptions, from 16.5 per cent of the salary in 2010 to 20.25 per cent in 2015.

The employer covers 13.25 per cent of the subscription, while the remaining 7 per cent is paid by the subscribed employee.

In addition, the new Income Tax Law will have a major impact on the medical tourism sector as the tax imposed on hospitals has increased from 14 per cent to 20 per cent, Hammouri said.

Another concern is related to visa requirements for certain nationalities, he added, noting that patients from Iraq and its semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have changed their medical destination to countries other than Jordan due to visa requirements.

However, these challenges will not stop sector representatives from intensifying their efforts to keep promoting the country as a medical tourism destination, according to Hammouri.

He said the association will host a conference in May this year to examine the future of medical tourism in the Kingdom.

Participants from 25 countries are and expected to attend the conference, which also seeks to promote medical skills in Jordan.

source: http://www.jordantimes.com / The Jordan Times / Home> Local> Article Details / by Khetam Malkawi / January 13th, 2015

Comments Off on Medical tourism generates over JD1 billion in 2014 — PHA

Posted in Medical Tourism/Health Tourism, Others, Reports,Features, Statistics

Davao Doctors Hospital seeks medical tourism accreditation

Posted on December 30, 2014 | Comments Off on Davao Doctors Hospital seeks medical tourism accreditation

Davao City :

Fresh from renovation and facilities upgrade, Davao Doctors Hospital (DDH) has started securing international accreditation to become a medical tourism facility by 2016.

Raymund C.S. del Val, president and chief executive officer of DDH, said the hospital has also started discussing with possible partners on how to package and promote the facility — 34% owned by Metro Pacific Investments Corp. — to both local and foreign tourists.

“The first issue is the facility where you will avail of the services is one that you think is internationally accepted,” Mr. del Val said.

The hospital specializes in orthopedics, nuclear medicine and spine surgery, among others.

Among the accreditations the hospital is seeking is a certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Hospitals that want to be declared as a medical tourism facility are required to have an ISO certificate under the amended Tourism Code of Davao City.

The city council approved the revised Tourism Code last month, which now includes medical services as a potential driver of tourism.

International consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers forecasts that global medical tourism could be a $10-trillion industry by 2020, from about $2.7 trillion in 2002.

source: http://www.bworldonline.com / Business World Online / Home> Corporate News / by Carmelito O Francisco, Correspondent / Manila, Phillippines – December 31st, 2014

Comments Off on Davao Doctors Hospital seeks medical tourism accreditation

Posted in Associations/Organisations/Government/NonGovernment, Medical Tourism/Health Tourism, Others

University Hospitals receives $5 million gift to transform travel medicine services, research

Posted on November 30, 2014 | Comments Off on University Hospitals receives $5 million gift to transform travel medicine services, research
The Roe Green Center for Travel Medicine, named after a Lyndhurst philanthropist, will use a $5 million gift to expand research support, launch an annual lecture series on emerging global health problems and develop tele-consultation capacity for travel and international diseases, among other initiatives. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The Roe Green Center for Travel Medicine, named after a Lyndhurst philanthropist, will use a $5 million gift to expand research support, launch an annual lecture series on emerging global health problems and develop tele-consultation capacity for travel and international diseases, among other initiatives. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Cleveland , Ohio  :

A $5 million gift from a local philanthropist is being used to establish the Roe Green Center for Travel Medicine at University Hospitals. The donation by Green, a Lyndhurst woman who has provided significant funding to a variety of local causes for years, will help transform UH’s travel medicine clinics.

UH’s travel clinics , at UH Case Medical Center, and the UH Chagrin Highlands and UH Westlake health centers, provide pre-travel preventive care and education, and diagnosis and treatment for ill travelers upon their return. The gift will allow UH to begin planning for a future clinic at UH Ahuja Health Center in Beachwood, replacing the Orange Village location.

The gift also will support research, an annual lecture series on emerging global health problems, and telemedicine.

When UH’s travel clinic first opened in 1972, it was the first of its kind in the United States. Roughly 150 people sought medical services in that first year, said Dr. Robert Salata, chief of infectious diseases at UH Case Medical Center and professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Today, the number of annual visits is close to 4,500, he said.

What sets UH apart from other travel clinics is its multiple locations, physicians on staff, research, and that it provides pediatric care through UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, and care to foreign visitors and immigrants, Salata said.

The number of international tourist arrivals worldwide reached a record 1.087 billion in 2013, an increase of 5 percent over 2012, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

By 2030, that number will reach 1.8 billion; UNWTO projects that travel to emerging destinations – places like Vietnam, Central and South America and Sub-Saharan Africa – will grow at twice the rate as travel to regions with advanced economies.

While the deadly Ebola virus has pushed the issue of safe international  travel in the forefront, it’s mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and Chikungunya  – the latter of which in recent years has begun to flourish in the Carribean, Latin America and the southern U.S. – that are much bigger threats to more travelers, Salata said. There is no treatment available for Chikungunya, the symptoms of which include severe joint pain and arthritis that can last for several months.

“Only about 40 percent of folks are seeking pre-travel advice about the risks and preventive medications,” Salata said. With more people visiting foreign countries – including more elderly people, pregnant women and people with underlying medical conditions – more attention needs to be paid to preventive care, he said.

Roe Green

Roe Green

Green has provided substantial support to various causes, among them the performing arts, Kent State University and a Chardon-based shelter and counseling service.

This latest gift, Green concedes, is a bit “out of the box” for her.

“I love to travel,” said Green, who began traveling overseas as a teenager with her parents, and who has been to more than 160 countries. Now in her 60s, she stops by UH’s East side clinic before every trip. “To me, the best education you can get is through traveling.”

As part of Green’s wish for the Cleveland area to develop a reputation as a center for information on international infectious diseases, “I’d like to see more people do research on more of these rare diseases,” she said.

To that end, part of the grant will be dedicated to supporting the work of individual physician-investigators in the area of travel medicine and international infectious diseases – strengthening the ongoing work being done at UH Case Medical Center and CWRU, which ranks fifth in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding for infectious disease research.

“We envision putting aside money on an annual basis on what we call pilot research funding,” Salata said. “I think this really will allow us to develop something special.”

source: http://www.cleveland.com / Home / by Angela Townsend, The Plain Dealer / November 17th, 2014

Comments Off on University Hospitals receives $5 million gift to transform travel medicine services, research

Posted in Medical Tourism/Health Tourism, Others, Reports,Features, Statistics, Uncategorized

Why Florida should embrace medical tourism

Posted on November 4, 2014 | Comments Off on Why Florida should embrace medical tourism

A REPORT FROM FLORIDA TAXWATCH

Already a capital of global tourism, Florida has an opportunity to bring even more tourists and more revenue to the state by investing in medical tourism, according to an independent analysis by Florida TaxWatch. The report, “Medical Tourism in Florida,” finds that patients visiting Florida from around the United States and the world for planned medical procedures could have a significant impact on the state economy and while improving residents’ health care options.

“Florida’s world-quality health care professionals are a valuable resource for the state,” said Dominic M. Calabro, President and CEO of Florida TaxWatch. “Highlighting Florida as a world-class vacation and medical destination will increase state revenue to the benefit of taxpayers and will firmly establish the state as a thriving location for health care professionals and businesses.”

FloridaCT04nov2014

Florida is on the precipice of a medical tourism boom, with many state and local providers engaging in their own medical tourism initiatives. Florida is already a worldwide leader in traditional tourism, and the report highlights the opportunity to expand Florida’s tourism marketing activities to include medical tourism and the state’s superior health care facilities and talent.

Out-of-state patients taking advantage of Florida’s superior medical services in cosmetic and elective surgery, cancer care, and chronic disease treatments bring new revenue sources to the state. The report suggests that patients and their families may contribute a significant amount to local communities where they are staying for care, as well as the state, increasing economic prosperity across the health care, hospitality, transportation, recreation, and entertainment business sectors.

In addition to increased state revenues and lower tax burdens for Floridians, a growing medical tourism industry could improve health care for permanent residents, as more doctors and top medical talent decide to remain in Florida. While medical tourism has been occurring in Florida with select health care providers, the state has not yet implemented a plan to market Florida as a medical tourism destination.

“Medical tourism attracts more than medical tourists. It attracts businesses, jobs, and encourages health care professionals to remain in Florida, while improving health care options for our Florida residents,” added Calabro. “Just like Florida’s traditional tourism venues provide unique resident-exclusive opportunities to Floridians, medical tourism facilities will provide added value to residents.”

source: http://www.floridatrend.com / Florida Trend / Home> Report / October 30th, 2014

Comments Off on Why Florida should embrace medical tourism

Posted in Medical Tourism/Health Tourism, Others, Reports,Features, Statistics

RESEARCH : SFU’s latest Canada Research Chairs

Posted on November 2, 2014 | Comments Off on RESEARCH : SFU’s latest Canada Research Chairs

A trio of Simon Fraser University researchers has secured $2.4 million in new funding as Canada Research Chairs. They are among 137 new and renewed chairs at 34 post-secondary institutions.

SFU receives funding for two new chairs and a renewed chair:

Computing science professor Jian Pei is the new Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Big Data Science. Widely regarded as one of the world’s top experts in data mining, Pei is trailblazing ways to analyze the exponential growth of information, known as big data.

Pei’s research deals with data sets too large to be captured, stored and analyzed by traditional database tools, in particular applications such as social networks, healthcare informatics and business intelligence.

A prolific author, Pei is cited as one of the top 10 authors worldwide in the field of data mining, according to Microsoft Academic Search. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards including induction as a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and NSERC’s Discovery Accelerator Supplements Award. An ACM Distinguished Speaker, Pei is a highly sought-after lecturer with SFU’s new professional master’s degree program in big data.

Valorie Crooks, an associate professor in the Department of Geography and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar, is a health geographer who specializes in health services research. She holds the new Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Health Geographies.

In 2008, Crooks became the first Canadian researcher to receive a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant to study medical tourism. Since then, she has led many CIHR-funded studies investigating complex, overlapping ethical, equity and consumer issues generated by the industry’s prolific global growth.

Through the Medical Tourism Research Group, which she founded in 2009 at SFU, Crooks collaborates with numerous researchers on studying patients’ private purchase of medical procedures and treatments abroad. Her findings are regularly published in high-profile journals and disseminated through her research group’s website.

Crooks has also co-edited numerous books, including Working Bodies, which explores how Canadians living with chronic illnesses navigate workplace environments.

Paul Tupper uses mathematics and computer simulations to study phenomena in linguistics and cognitive science. His Canada Research Chair in Applied Mathematics has been renewed. Tupper’s research uses mathematics to study a variety of different phenomena. In collaboration with a psychologist who studies learning and attention, he is creating a computer model of how human subjects perform categorization tasks, with a goal to improve the design of software tools for training people to perform such tasks.

Together with linguists, he is also modeling how linguistic information, such as the sound of different vowels, is stored in the mind. These models could be used to study how and why languages change from generation to generation.

“We congratulate Drs. Pei and Crooks, whose excellence in research has been recognized with new Canada Research Chair (CRC) positions,” says SFU Vice President Research Joy Johnson.

“They join Dr. Tupper and more than 30 of their SFU colleagues who currently hold a CRC in support of outstanding innovative research in areas that further SFU’s research mission.”

source: http://www.sfu.ca / Simon Fraser University / Home> SFU News / October 24th, 2014

http://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2014/sfu-s-latest-canada-research-chairs.html

Comments Off on RESEARCH : SFU’s latest Canada Research Chairs

Posted in Associations/Organisations/Government/NonGovernment, Medical Tourism/Health Tourism, Others, Reports,Features, Statistics