Networks and supply chains: the nature of medical tourism markets

In further developing medical tourism scholarship there is a challenge of linking together empirical insights to identify wider processes, relations and dynamics that are empirically founded without being empiricist. This chapter takes such a route, identifying and understanding the components of medical tourism on both supply and demand sides, and their implications. On the demand side this involves moving from singular transactions to a focus on enchainment and networks, and how information, treatment, and support are enmeshed within these. As medical tourism is located in the private sector without regulation and formal referral by public health providers, the role of informal linkages and pathways between patients and clinics is of central importance. For the supply side, the chapter examines organizational responses around service differentiation, integration and centralization.