Introducing a Comprehensive Conceptual Model for Capacity Development of Medical Tourism

Medical tourism is emerged as one of the new capacities for tourism in current market. Medical tourism development leads to the strengthening of human resources, organizations, and the individual/social capacities . Many researchers overviewed the issue of capacity development of medical tourism by various models; however, there is not the coexistence of capacity development and medical tourism components in their models. Hence, this research attempts to study the medical tourism and capacity development conceptual models to provide a novel model for capacity development of medical tourism. The research method is basically content analysis and the research type is fundamental. The data is collected from library research. Examination of models and main variables is done within the whole health system including tourist destination, organizations and institutions, and the tourists through consideration of different capacity levels and the socio-cultural, economic and political factors which form the sustainable development of destination. The results emphasize that the capacity development of medical tourism should consider the whole health system in the destination from institutional and tourist dimensions rising from the individual level up to the social level. Finally, our novel model is derived and introduced from deep consideration of all studied models.