THE Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) last month hosted the Korea Medical Tourism Festival 2014 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (Adnec) in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
This two-day event featured a variety of presentations by hundreds of participants on various medical technologies and services as well as Korean culture and tourism opportunities.Last year, Korea welcomed 122,297 medical tourists, recording the highest number of arrivals among GCC residents with a growth rate of 32.1 per cent compared to the previous year. Korea’s medical tourism industry has been expanding at an average rate of 38.4 per cent annually since it began promoting this sector in 2009.With the growing rate of overseas travellers seeking health care and medical services in Korea, KTO forecasts a rise of about 600,000 medical tourists by 2015 and one million by 2020. Bank of Korea confirmed the highest increase in income from medical tourism to date with $187 million in the first 11 months of 2013 alone – a 35.3 per cent increase from the previous year.“We want everyone who visits Korea to feel at home and so have in turn developed personalised services for Muslim patients by implementing guidelines for clinical care, food, religious considerations, accommodation types and translation services to name a few,” says regional director of KTO, Kim Kwang Hee. “Another crucial step was to centralise our health network systems using cutting-edge technology to automatically update patient medical records across the country, thus enabling smooth transition through all of our treatment locations.” More than 3,800 new hospitals and clinics have established in the country during this year alone - all of which have been developed to cater to international patients.Korea offers robotic surgery maximising precision and minimising scars and has made significant advancements in treatment of spinal injuries, prostate diseases, cancer, diabetes and obesity.