Chapter 3: Future of Health Tourism: Innovations and Emerging Trends in the Light of Industry 4.0 and Sustainability—A Scientific Review

Healthcare is an important sector for all of us and also an emerging industry. It is widely connected with other industries, like tourism and information technology, due to the rapid growth of ICT in healthcare for the wider community development. Historically, health tourism is very much important and an old concept, and people in ancient times also traveled for the purpose of healthcare. The development of Computing Systems and ICT results in many things in healthcare, and among these, telemedicine is considered one of the important and emerging for diverse reasons, namely. patient consulting, appointment of the physician, medical monitoring, remote nursing and caring, etc. There are variety of reasons for using ICT in health tourism, and it includes reduction of the cost and exploring culture of different places and countries. There are several treatments which increase the concept of Medical Tourism, like cosmetic surgery, alternative medicine, stem cell therapy, yoga treatment, etc. There are different ongoing practices in health tourism, and it includes the enhancement of telemedicine, personalized healthcare, and monitoring. Wellness tourism is another practice in health tourism in recent past. There are many emerging technologies in health tourism practice, and this includes utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) in variety of places, including enhancing personalized healthcare, improved Healthcare 5.0 practices, etc. This chapter deals with health tourism, particularly on emerging technologies used in health tourism, practices of sustainable approaches in health tourism, Industry 4.0 in Healthcare Systems, Healthcare 5.0 in Healthcare Tourism context, and so on.