COVID-19: Reshaping Medical Tourism through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics

Abstract

The tourism and travel sector is a large and thriving industry, with almost 5 billion international tourist arrivals recorded in 2019, with an annual growth of 4% on the previous year. Yet it suffered a major downturn, globally due to Covid 19. Since the concept of healthcare has existed, humans have been willing to travel to access it. From the spas of the ancient Sumerians, Greeks, and Romans, to the supposed curative properties of alpine and seaside health resorts in early modern Europe, the idea of traveling long distances for health reasons, and marketing destinations for that purpose, is certainly nothing new However, lately, medical tourism has been growing due to the low-cost treatment, Specialization of medical agencies, hospitals, and medical professionals in the host countries. This type of tourism was valued at USD 16.761 million in 2018, and it is expected to reach USD 27,247.6 million by 2024. However, the appearance of COVID 19 has completely changed the tourism sector, where a loss of USD 910 billion to USD 1.2 trillion from export revenues from tourism was reported Moreover, the different types of Tourism and travel industry are taking advantage of Artificial intelligence (AI) in order to perform a variety of administrative and customer service tasks. For medical tourism the development of these technologies (AI, robotic, and so on) play a key role in supporting the medical agencies in connecting physicians and prospective medical tourists. In addition to make it more feasible and credible option for patients, respond to questions and provide valuable information to customers, and allows to reduce the time would be impossible for humans. Furthermore, international remote surgeries will allow various clinical centers to pool their expertise and offer remote surgeries from a central operating theatre that is convenient to access for patients and persuade patients to invest in the local economy. Keywords: Medical Tourism, COVID-19, AI, Robotics.