The SFU Medical Tourism Research Group
Medical tourism involves international travel with the intent of addressing medical care needs of the traveler that occurs outside of arranged cross-border care. Such medical care is usually paid for out-of-pocket. Specific interventions include necessary surgeries, cosmetic surgeries, reproductive treatments, organ transplantation, and travel for experimental treatments such as stem cell transfers and CCSVI treatment for multiple sclerosis. Our research team is particularly interested in Canadians’ travel for elective surgeries that do not involve purchased human organs.
The practice of medical tourism raises important questions for the safety of patients, creates uncertainties about impacts on patients’ home countries and destination countries, and creates ethical issues both for people who have and have not participated in medical tourism. Our research team is interested in each of these issues. For example, we want to understand the implications of health and safety issues in medical tourism for patients’ decision-making and physicians’ involvement in the process of decision-making. We are also interested in identifying pressing ethical issues in the practice of medical tourism and their local and global outcomes.
The aim of this website is to disseminate research on medical tourism conducted by our research group. Our group is based at Simon Fraser University (SFU) near Vancouver, Canada. Our research is ongoing, so please check back on this page from time to time to see our latest work. If you have questions about our research, please send an email to: medtour@sfu.ca.
top...Research Summaries Now Available
Interested in medical tourism research but don’t have the time to read our full reports and publications? You can now download one-page summaries of some of our completed work (see titles below). Please do share these summaries with others in your networks. New summaries will be posted here regularly.
- Circumvention Medical Tourism
- Content Analysis of Medical Tourists' Patient Testimonials
- Medical Tourism's Impacts on Health Worker Migration
- Faith, Hope and Trust in Medical Tourism
- Understanding the Potential Health Equity Impacts of Medical Tourism Sector Growth and Development in Barbados
- Roles and Responsibilities of Informal Caregivers in Medical Tourism
- Saint Lucia's Medical Tourism Sector
- Mexico's Medical Tourism Sector
- Bangalore's Medical Tourism Sector
- Chennai's Medical Tourism Sector
- Guatemala's Medical Tourism Sector
- Jamaica's Growing Medical Tourism Sector
- Canadian Patients' Perspectives Regarding the Use of Medical Tourism for Hip and Knee Surgery
- Industry Perspectives on Informal Caregiving in Medical Tourism
- Barbados' Medical Tourism Sector
- Outbound Medical Tourism from Mongolia
- Ethical Concerns about Canadian Patients' Involvement in Medical Tourism
- Canadian Medical Tourism Facilitators' Business Practices
- Canadian Family Doctors' Roles and Responsibilities Towards Outbound Medical Tourists
- Health and Safety Risks in Outbound Medical Tourism by Canadian Patients
- Canadian Patients' Decision-Making in Medical Tourism