Medical Travel: the Ethical and Legal Challenges

Medical tourism is a term referring to the people traveling to other countries to obtain medical care. Like any other rapid growing industry, medical tourism has prompted ethical and legal issues. These issues are mainly pertained to malpractice and consumer protection. Beside these, risk management, foreign hospital liabilities, international advocacy, facility ownership, intellectual property, organ trafficking and ethical issues are other matters that should be addressed. Travel medicine also contains alternative medicine and telemedicine. Therefore, comprehensive and detailed legal regulations should be performed to govern mentioned issues. Otherwise, in the future this industry will face serious challenges.