A Technology Package for Electronic Infrastructures of Health Tourism

Information Technology creates a foundation for developing health tourism. The purpose of the current study was to provide an information technology package for electronic infrastructures of health tourism.

In this review study, in order to find various dimensions of health tourism, articles related to electronic health tourism were searched in PubMed, Science Direct and Scopus databases, as well as Google Scholar and specific websites of health tourism. Searched key words included Medical Tourism, Health Tourism "AND" Information Technology, Information and Communication Technology, e-Tourism and Electronic Tourism. Criteria for selecting articles were access to their full texts as well as covering some aspects of information technology in the field of health tourism. The search yielded 117 articles, of which 32 articles were selected finally. The contents of these articles were carefully studied and the technology package of health tourism was presented.

Based on the findings, an information technology package was developed that included different types of technology tools, capabilities, and outcomes of information technology applications in health tourism. In this package, Internet was the main tool for developing health tourism, websites of health centers were the most important capability of these technologies, and creating a competitive and interactive health system was the main consequence of information technology application in the field of health tourism.

The designed package illustrates the dependence of positive outcomes of health tourism development to information-communication technologies. These tools provide the potential for gaining a share of the health tourism market and reform the health system structure to deliver high quality services in a global level.