Lunt Neil, Hardey Mariann, Mannion Russell
The York Management School, University of York, York, UK.
Open Med Inform J. 2010 Feb 12;4:1-11. doi: 10.2174/1874431101004010001.
An emerging trend is what has become commonly known as 'Medical Tourism' where patients travel to overseas destinations for specialised surgical treatments and other forms of medical care. With the rise of more affordable cross-border travel and rapid technological developments these movements are becoming more commonplace. A key driver is the platform provided by the internet for gaining access to healthcare information and advertising. There has been relatively little attention given to the role and impact of web-based information to inform Medical Tourism decisions.This article provides a brief overview of the most recent development in Medical Tourism and examines how this is linked to the emergence of specialized internet web sites. It produces a summary of the functionality of medical tourist sites, and situates Medical Tourism informatics within the broader literatures relating to information search, information quality and decision-making.This paper is both a call to strengthen the empirical evidence in this area, and also to advocate integrating Medical Tourism research within a broader conceptual framework.
一种新兴趋势就是人们通常所说的“医疗旅游”，即患者前往海外目的地接受专科手术治疗和其他形式的医疗服务。随着跨境旅行成本降低以及技术的迅速发展，这些流动变得越来越普遍。一个关键驱动因素是互联网提供的获取医疗保健信息和广告的平台。基于网络的信息在医疗旅游决策中所起的作用和影响相对而言很少受到关注。本文简要概述了医疗旅游的最新发展情况，并探讨了其与专业互联网网站出现之间的联系。它总结了医疗旅游网站的功能，并将医疗旅游信息学置于与信息搜索、信息质量和决策相关的更广泛文献中进行考量。本文既是呼吁加强该领域的实证证据，也是倡导将医疗旅游研究纳入更广泛的概念框架。
