According to Patients Beyond Borders, a medical travel advocacy group for consumers, globally around 14 million to 16 million patients traveled outside their home countries to seek treatment in 2017. With ease in travel restrictions and skies opening up for foreign patients, Hospitals have again started regaining on the $9 billion Medical Travel business in countries like India.
Most of the flights coming from Middle East, Africa & neighboring Bangladesh are either completely, or mostly filled with patients and their attendants highlighting the huge demand for Indian healthcare, despite rising Covid numbers. However, for most hospitals, 80-90% of their patients came from referral channels built through traditional branding activities like travelling and events. With Covid impacting most corporate travels & events, that is set to change permanently and startups like Hospals are ramping up to virtualize Hospital marketing across the globe.
In its endeavor to support the booming Medical Tourism in key markets including India, UAE, Turkey and South East Asia, Surgery Consultancy Startup, Hospals, has launched a tech enabled promotion platform for Hospitals. The platform aims to aid Hospitals amidst Covid woes by generating over $300 million in revenues and attract over 50,000 international patients in the next 3 years. Patients that traditionally travelled to Singapore or Germany are moving to UAE and India, and prefer engaging with brands like Hospals to take guidance on surgeries & advanced treatments.
The platform enables Hospitals to connect with Hospals Surgery Consultants across the world who are guiding patients from their respective countries in choosing the right Hospital brand for their life saving and healthcare need. Its AI solutions enables consultants to find the most suitable hospitals for over 700 surgeries, and engage with these hospitals for queries & quotes. With a suite of multi-lingual apps for consultants & patients, it enables hospitals to vastly increase their reach and depth of patient engagement across the globe.
Hospals, launched by Serial Entrepreneur and ex-Paytm Vice President, Danish Ahmed, is tech enabled network of surgery consultants across India, Middle east, Bangladesh & multiple African countries. Danish had earlier cofounded and exited ecommerce ventures Yebhi.com and Shopsity, before his stint at Paytm as Vice President during demonetization. Started in 2018, the company brought over 1500 patients to India for surgical treatments, generating over $9 million in revenues for Hospitals, before Covid halted all flights in March 2020. Hospals had earlier raised $2.4 million from Wavemaker, Spiral & Innoven Singapore, and rapidly scaled to become the largest medical travel startup across South Asia. The startup is aiming high to strengthen India’s medical tourism and enable hospitals to seamlessly reach out to foreign patients seeking for medical aid by offering unique marketing and promotion platform. The company aims to become a global brand with an expected turnover of $200m in next five years.
Addressing the recovery roadmap for promising medical tourism category, Danish Ahmed, Founder, Hospals said, “Covid has essentially reshuffled the Medical Travel market. India, Turkey & UAE are gaining market share from Europe and South East Asia, as patients become cost conscious and seek quality medical care & good prices. With great support from Ministry of Tourism & Commerce, India’s medical tourism industry is offerings state of the art advanced medical facilities, skilled doctors and low-cost treatment along with our ancient wisdom such as Ayurveda, wellness & rehab facilities to the world. We are seeing 20% market recovery already, and expect the industry to surpass earlier records by June 2021”
“We are confident that with our unique Hospital Promotion Platform, majority of Hospital brands will successfully attract thousands of international patients by offering seamless services, utmost medical care at affordable cost and quality assurance”, he further added.
“We’re seeing a positive trend on international patients. Revenues are on an upward trend and we are back to 20% of pre-Covid levels. We have been actively using technology to create more effective channels for customer engagement and marketing. Hospals has been a key partner in this journey creating effective channels to efficiently interact, engage and service the patients globally”, said Diveya Shah, International marketing head, Artemis Hospital.
India is increasingly becoming a preferred global medical destination for patients suffering from Cancer, Cardiac & other life-threatening diseases. In 2015 over 500,000 patients visited India which was estimated to reach 1 million in 2019. More recently, patients from USA & Europe had started visiting India for Dental, Rehab and Wellness treatments.