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The Impact of Blockchain on Medical Tourism

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Smart Business: Technology and Data Enabled Innovative Business Models and Practices (WeB 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 403))

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Abstract

Medical tourism has witnessed significant growth over the last decade. This nascent sector creates a new tourist class with access to affordable healthcare services by combining healthcare services with tourism and hospitality. Information technology is an essential factor, which can enable the growth of medical tourism. Technology enables the search process for information about the available services, costs, hospitality, tourism and post-treatment options. However, these technologies are primarily legacy systems and lack interoperability. Several questions arise, including the potential patient-tourist ability to verify crucial factors such as the quality of care and the credentials of the medical professionals and medical facilities. Moreover, questions arise regarding patient-doctor trust, procedure and risk transparency‚ medical record privacy and other health-related hazards in specific procedures. In this conceptual paper, we investigate the potential benefits of Blockchain technology to address some of the open questions in medical tourism. We conclude that Blockchain technology can benefit medical tourism, and we lay the foundation for future research.

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Acknowledgement

The publication of this work was supported by: EFOP- 3.6.1-16-2016-00017 (Internationalisation, initiatives to establish a new source of researchers and graduates and development of knowledge and technological transfer as instruments of intelligent specialisations at Széchenyi István University).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Doctoral School of Regional Sciences and Business Administration, Széchenyi István University, Győr, 9026, Hungary

    Abderahman Rejeb

  2. Henley Business School, University of Reading, Greenlands, Henley-on-Thames, RG9 3AU, UK

    John G. Keogh

  3. Department of International Management, Modul University Vienna, 1190, Vienna, Austria

    Horst Treiblmaier

Authors
  1. Abderahman Rejeb
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  2. John G. Keogh
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  3. Horst Treiblmaier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Horst Treiblmaier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Baruch College, New York, NY, USA

    Karl R. Lang

  2. Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA

    Jennifer Xu

  3. Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Bin Zhu

  4. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Xiao Liu

  5. University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, USA

    Michael J. Shaw

  6. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Han Zhang

  7. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Ming Fan

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Rejeb, A., Keogh, J.G., Treiblmaier, H. (2020). The Impact of Blockchain on Medical Tourism. In: Lang, K.R., et al. Smart Business: Technology and Data Enabled Innovative Business Models and Practices. WeB 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 403. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67781-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67781-7_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-67780-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-67781-7

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