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Review
. 2024 Apr;31(2):18-29.
doi: 10.21315/mjms2024.31.2.3. Epub 2024 Apr 23.

Healthcare Facilities and Medical Tourism Across the World: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abdul Latief  1   2 , Maria Ulfa  1   3
Affiliations
Review

Healthcare Facilities and Medical Tourism Across the World: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abdul Latief et al. Malays J Med Sci. 2024 Apr.

Abstract

This study aimed to review the literature on healthcare facilities and medical tourism from a range of nations that have established medical tourism sectors and assess the effect of healthcare facilities on medical tourism. A bibliometric study of the Scopus database was carried out by using the search terms '(Facility AND of AND healthcare) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (health AND tourism) AND medical tourism' for the years 2012-2022. A qualitative evaluation of the literature was then performed to find and locate 92 articles. VOSviewer and NVivo 12 Plus were employed for data analysis. The findings indicated that the following trending subject keywords were used during the period in question: health (rate 1.97), medicine (rate 1.91), tourism (rate 1.70), care (rate 0.83), facilities (rate 0.64) and healthcare (rate 0.61). Furthermore, this research identified four distinct clusters: i) medical tourism, ii) healthcare quality, iii) healthcare system and iv) health services. The study found that healthcare facilities, as actors that have a role in the development of medical tourism, have not been sufficiently explored, even though there is evidence that they play a role in the growth of the sector. This result is in line with Heung's argument, which makes the same point.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; development; healthcare facility; hospital; medical tourism.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: None.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Steps in selecting articles
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of publications by year of healthcare facility in medical tourism
Figure 3
Figure 3
Scientific productions by country of a review healthcare facility in medical tourism
Figure 4
Figure 4
The keywords trends of a review healthcare facilities on medical tourism worldwide by year
Figure 5
Figure 5
Network visualisation by keywords using VOSviewer of healthcare facilities in medical tourism
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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