Abstract
Essential developments in health tourism indicate that technology is critical to the current health system. The digital age makes life easier by providing fast accessibility, easy usability, and integrating new technological equipment into routine life. Developments in the field of digitalization in health tourism initially focused on e-Health technologies, which use information and communication technologies to improve existing communication processes, such as electronic health records. Managers and employees need to be prepared for the profound transformation brought about by technology. While it is essential for companies to evaluate investments in technologies through cost-benefit analysis, employees need to understand that they should focus on developing their own skills (corporate training, online courses, completing university degrees, etc.) rather than complaining about robots being replaced. For this reason, the study's primary purpose is to reveal the reflections on using new generation technologies in health tourism.
TopIntroduction
Health services is a dynamic sector closely related to other industries such as travel, tourism, information, communication, and technology. Health tourism, which emerged with the merger of the health and travel sectors, has gained significant force in recent years and created an extraordinary development in human mobility worldwide. The concept of health travel periods back to ancient times when people traveled far in search of the best health services (Wong & Hazley, 2021). Ancient civilizations recognized the therapeutic effects of thermal medicine, spa, and sacred temple baths (Gianfaldoni et al., 2017). The Sumerian Temple (4000 BC) is considered one of the world's first wellness centers where people from different parts of the world travel to get solutions for their medical inconveniences. The ancient Greeks have been arranged the first foundation for a comprehensive health travel system (HMT, 2022).
As part of the wellness journey, patients need time to recover, for these reasons these travels have evolved to include rest and entertainment in the modern age. This evolution has forced destination marketers to reconsider tourists’ needs who receive health care when visiting a destination (Yusof et al., 2019). Therefore, a health tourist is defined as a tourist who travels from another place to request and receive improved health, medical, or well-being services for special reasons (Wong & Hazley, 2021). Depending on the technological advancement, real-lifelike experiences are offered and therefore the number of digital users is increasing. Many businesses that get this as an opportunity, are looking for new ways to use digital platforms to maximize their creativity and reach their target spectators in the most effective way possible. Even if they reside in their own country, remote control of health tourists by teleconsultations to evaluate the medicinal process requires digitalization. It is possible for patients to follow local primary health care providers in their own country through health professionals, teleconferencing, or telehealth applications in the health tourism destination. Therefore, technology is a very useful application for health tourism, especially in improving the pre-operative and post-operative care process from both medical and health tourist service perspectives (MTM, 2022). The progress of health technologies has a decisive role in health tourism. Therefore, for example, medical technologies that were previously applied only in sports medicine are now also offered in treatments for common patients, developing health tourism and promoting of healthy life (Glass, 2021).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Metaverse: The metaverse refers to both current and future integrated digital platforms focused on virtual and augmented reality.
Industry 5.0: Industry 5.0 is the revolution in which man and machine reconcile and find ways to work together to improve the means and efficiency of production.
Health Tourism: Health tourism refers to the travels of people to different countries for treatment purposes in order to receive health services.
IoT: Internet of Things, which we know by the abbreviation IoT, refers to the entire network of connected devices and technologies that enable communication both between devices and the cloud and between devices themselves.
Next Generation Technologies (NGT): Next Generation Technologies is a full-service technology company with products and services ranging from personal computing sales/service to multi-site WAN/LAN engineering, project management, IT strategic planning, IT committee, security, and system integration.