The market of medical tourism: opportunities and perspectives

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic and the complex geopolitical situation have considerably reduced international medical travel, which has had a significant impact on the medical tourism market. At the same time, these circumstances have acted as a trigger for expanding the range of opportunities in the domestic market and the emergence of new types of medical services, such as vaccine tourism. AIM: To study the current opportunities of the medical tourism market in Russia and to outline promising areas for its development and optimization in view of the existing limitations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The article reviews current legislative and regulatory legal acts, publications of modern authors on the issue of medical tourism development in Russia and also studies the demand for and popularity of medical tourism among the consumer audience (through Google Trends service). RESULTS: Based on the analysis, it is established that the main difficulties of medical tourism sector development in our country at the present stage are weak transport infrastructure, low targeting of services and imperfections of the unified register. CONCLUSION: Such problems as weak transport infrastructure, low targeting and amateur private sector activities reduce the pace of development of domestic tourism. Given the current shortcomings, optimization of the domestic medical tourism market in Russia requires building new logistics solutions.