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Is humanity heading to immortal living? If so, what areas of society are playing an active role in achieving this? In order to understand this, the study explores the relationship between immortality and the wellness and medical tourism industry to seek potential relationships between them and ultimately, asks difficult questions about the growth of these tourism sectors and the potential need for greater regulation of them.

Taking a pragmatic philosophical approach and through the examination of refined information from secondary sources and published material and reports, the study presents original theoretical knowledge and a model exploring tourism and human immortality.

This paper argues that continued growth in the wellness and medical markets today could lead to a world where transhumanists and cyborgs are present in our world, even taking over from Homo sapiens. The study presents a model highlighting the potential role of wellness and medical tourism markets, illustrating the potential for future consumer services that could further fuel the search for immortality. Thus, how such markets and consumer desires are (in)directly supporting humanities desire for (non-human) immortal existence.

Today, individuals are driven by wellness practices and medical and cosmetic desires and are willing to travel the globe in search of companies who are either capable of carrying out the desired procedures or seeking prices more affordable to them. This research offers novel insights into these complex relationships and maps the affiliation between wellness and medical practices and the concept of immortality.

This study aims to explore the empirical correlation between patient flow issues, quality of green health services and patient satisfaction in specialist medical department factors from patients’ perspectives as service consumers.

This research is a type of nonintervention empirical research that uses an open survey to explore the views and experiences of users of specialist medical department services. The targeted population is hospital patients included in the top five national PERSI (Indonesian Hospital Association) Award 2022 Green Hospital Category, with a total number of respondents of 572 people. This study uses the partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis method with the SmartPLS application.

Patient flow problems generally affect the quality of eco-friendly health services, except for the waiting time problem, which affects service quality. It should be understood as a top priority for patients to receive services from medical specialists without risking time as a core service aspect from the patient’s perspective. In addition, all variables in eco-friendly hospital services affect patient satisfaction, except in the case of visits to specialist medical departments, which do not affect medical support services and hospital practices that are responsive to the delivery of care services resulting from medical support services that are inseparable in integrated services as well as health care following medical ethics.

This study has a novelty in understanding the implications of green practice in determining patient satisfaction in medical specialist department as the epicenter of hospital services and the main object of assessment for the quality of hospital services.

This chapter analyzes the tourism industry from national and regional perspectives, in order to understand the past and current trends in Costa Rica’s positioning and branding attributes and strategies for tourism development. The intent here is not to provide an exhaustive comprehensive literature review of academic research on country branding; and so it is by all means a case study as it describes the evolution of the tourism industry in Costa Rica – including the transformative stages the country went through since the 1980s – as planned tourism national management programs evolved toward reaching the target of creating a nature-based tourism brand. The medical industry and then medical tourism industries are analyzed in a global basis and the US market is examined in detail because of its potential to develop a new complementary niche for Costa Rica’s tourism industry. The chapter intends to asses Costa Rica’s potential to become a country brand in medical tourism, leveraged on its natural tourism destination branding status quo.

Health care has become one of the paramount issues of the 21st century as governments and individuals grapple the complex problems associated with contemporary medical care such as cost, affordability, and shifting demographic trends. One response has been the growth of medical tourism (sometimes called health tourism or global healthcare). Medical tourism is an example of how the forces of globalization are re-shaping what has previously been a relatively stable localized service, medical treatment, in the face of changes to health care. While traveling to distant locations in search of health restoring locations is not new as the affluent have long traveled to spas or exotic locales to derive health benefits. What has changed is who is doing it and why they are doing it as insurers and patients alike become eager participants in the outsourcing of medical care. The rising number of uninsured and underinsured Americans, particularly in the middle class, has been coupled with effective marketing by medical tourism companies to produce growing numbers of Americans traveling to foreign countries for healthcare. China, India, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Thailand are only a few of the competitors for overseas patients as a source for economic development. Using analytic frameworks of Immanuel Wallerstein and Anthony Giddens to provide a social analysis of this phenomenon yields an exploration of this trend.

Bundled payments for care are an efficient mechanism to align payer, provider, and patient incentives in the provision of health care services for an episode of care. In this chapter, we use agency theory to examine the evolution of bundled payment programs in private and public payer arrangements, and postulate future directions for bundled payment development as a key component in the provision and payment of health care services.

As part of the routine work of the medical committees in the Israel Defense Forces, a unique nationwide computerized control system is being implemented to assess and manage medical processes. The purpose of this paper is to report on that implementation.

The computerized system consists of three main components: a specific status indicating the processes in each file, an appointment system, and an internal computerized system that uses a magnetic card for the regulation of the local waiting lists.

The combined computerized system improves the control and management of the medical processes and informatics from the point‐of‐view of both the patients and system operators. Different parameters of quality control regarding the medical and administrative processes are assessed (such as efficiency), and solutions are sought. Computerized system‐based design and re‐allocation of human and medical resources were implemented according to the capacities and limitations of the medical system. A reduction in the daily number of invited recruits improved the quality of the medical encounters. Specific combined status codes were introduced for the efficient planning of the medical encounters. Implementation and automation of medical regulations and procedures within the computerized system make the latter play a key role and serve as a control tool during the decision‐making process.

The computerized system allows efficient follow‐up and management of medical processes and informatics, led to a better utilization of human and medical resources, and becomes a component of the decision making by the system operators and the administrative staff. Such a system could be used with success in clinics, hospitals, and other medical facilities.

Recent studies indicated that the level of adoption of health data standards in healthcare organisations remains frustratingly low worldwide although health data standards have been perceived to be an essential tool for interoperability barriers within health information systems. The relevant literature still lacks significant studies concerning the issues of the adoption process of health data standards in healthcare organisations, and in particular those in developing nation. In addressing this gap in knowledge, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the adoption decision of health data standards in tertiary healthcare organisations in Saudi Arabia, and to develop a technology-organisation-environment list that contains the critical factors influencing their adoption.

A multiple-case study methodology was conducted in Saudi Arabia and different data collection methods were used included semi-structured interviews with different decision makers at various levels and departments of the subject organisations, and documents analysis to identify critical factors to the adoption decision of health data standards.

The findings demonstrated a list of key factors from different aspects impacting the adoption decision of health data standards in the subject organisations. The technological factors are complexity and compatibility of health data standards, IT infrastructure, switching costs, market uncertainties, systems integration and enhancing the use of advanced systems. The main organisational factors are the lack of adequate policies and procedures and information management plan, resistance to change, data analysis and accreditation. The core environmental factors are the lack of national regulator and data exchange plan, national healthcare system and the shortage of professionals.

The results from the qualitative data were difficult to generalise to other populations. For example, the structure of the health sector varies from country to country as each health sector has its own characteristics that affect and are affected by national circumstances. In order to provide a more grounded theory resulting from a qualitative study, further examination by conducting quantitative studies is required. In addition, the TOE approach does not take into account the sociotechnical issues and further research is required in this area.

The investigation into the adoption decision of health data standards in tertiary healthcare organisations in Saudi Arabia has led to the development of a technology-organisation-environment list that contains the critical factors influencing their adoption. The research outcome has addressed the gap in knowledge of the adoption of health data standards in healthcare organisations. It also provides the decision maker, and in particular those in developing nations, with better understanding of the adoption process of those standards to better judge and to develop suitable strategy of adoption interventions.

Although recent studies indicated that the level of adoption of health data standards in healthcare organisations remains frustratingly low, the prior studies related to health data standards missed out on the exploration of the adoption decision of different types of health data standards in healthcare organisations and the critical factors influencing their adoption. Research on health data standards adoption based out of a developing country such as Saudi Arabia can also potentially provide several new insights on standards practices.

This purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which one occupational group used boundary work to increase their influence and power with more influential occupational groups in a medical setting.

A qualitative interview study is used to investigate an occupational group (hospital dieticians) as it tried to increase its influence in a setting of established occupational groups. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with dieticians and managers at a university hospital, and by the examination of selected hospital documents.

This study concludes that the dieticians' boundary work to become more influential in a setting of established groups was characterized by their boundary setting actions as inner dialogue and their boundary spanning actions as outer dialogue. In the inner dialogue, the dieticians established a professional group and a vocabulary for the continuous communication of their unique competence that could relate to the existing medical knowledge. In the outer dialogue, the dieticians structured and made sense of their setting by the labelling of roles as power entities and by using self‐images and metaphors.

This research was designed to describe the dieticians' efforts and experiences in the studied setting. Therefore, the data provide access to one occupational group but not to the other groups in that setting. A second limitation is the absence of observations.

This research contributes to the knowledge of the relevance of practitioners involved in boundary work aimed at improving professional collaboration. The study is helpful in identifying important boundaries that facilitate the establishment of collaborative relationships, and the development of accounts, procedures and routines.

The research focuses on how influence on practice is constituted through boundary work.

This paper explores medical tourism development challenges in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) pre- and during Covid-19. Medical tourism is becoming a dynamic, rapid growth area and an engine of economic development.

In-depth interviews were conducted with medical tourism professionals. Fourteen medical tourism stakeholders were interviewed from 1 January to 31 January 2020. Qualitative thematic analysis was applied on medical tourism challenges before and during the pandemic.

The major themes indicated concerns for medical tourism in the UAE and they included higher medical services costs and a shortage of highly qualified medical expertise. The emerging themes related to the challenges of coping with Covid-19 and strategies to attract medical tourists.

This study contributes towards (1) the theory of medical tourism, (2) the related limited prior published work on this topic relating to the UAE and (3) the importance of medical tourism in today’s tourism industry. Additionally, there are theoretical and practical implications for medical tourism stakeholders in terms of attracting inbound medical tourists to the UAE from other countries during the Covid-19 crisis and in the post-pandemic situation.

Uwe Reinhardt stated that medical tourism can do to the US healthcare system what the Japanese automotive industry did to American carmakers after Japanese products developed a value for money and reliability reputation. Unlike cars, however, healthcare can seldom be test-driven. Quality is difficult to assess after an intervention (posteriori), therefore, it is frequently evaluated via accreditation before an intervention (a priori). This article aims to scope the growth in international accreditation and its relationship to medical tourism markets.

Using self-reported data from Accreditation Canada, Joint Commission International (JCI) and Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS), this article examines how quickly international accreditation is increasing, where it is occurring and what providers have been accredited.

Since January 2000, over 350 international hospitals have been accredited; the JCI's total nearly tripling between 2007-2011. Joint Commission International staff have conducted most international accreditation (over 90 per cent). Analysing which countries and regions where the most international accreditation has occurred indicates where the most active medical tourism markets are. However, providers will not solely be providing care for medical tourists.

Accreditation will not mean that mistakes will never happen, but that accredited providers are more willing to learn from them, to varying degrees. If a provider has been accredited by a large international accreditor then patients should gain some reassurance that the care they receive is likely to be a good standard.

The author questions whether commercializing international accreditation will improve quality, arguing that research is necessary to assess the accreditation of these growing markets.