In two years, in 2012, India’s medical tourism business is expected to reach a height of two billion dollars a year, as long as it continues to grow annually at thirty percent. The practice of people in the United States and Europe finding health care in other countries, such as India, continues to be a business that’s on the rise as patients strive to take advantage of lower costs as newer medical technologies spread out to other countries with a similar level of care based on international standards.

Treatment for health care in India has been shown to be about one tenth of the cost that it is in the United States or the United Kingdom. India is especially popular with medical tourists as they look for a place to obtain bone-marrow transplants, eye surgeries, hip replacements, and even cardiac bypass. It may be a surprise for some to find that India is known for hip resurfacing as well as heart surgery. As time goes by, the country continues to enter into higher levels of advanced medicine.

Chennai, in South India, is considered the health capital of the country, bringing in 45 percent of medical tourists, and around 30 to 40 percent of domestic health tourists from around the nation. In fact, it appears as if India is only second to Thailand in the health tourism industry, with Singapore trailing closely. Almost 450,000 foreigners seek attention in India on an annual basis. Thirteen hospitals in India are accredited with the JCI, or the Joint Commission International. The accreditation allows health tourists to have confidence that these places are meeting the international standards in medical care. The Ministry of Tourism in India, also known as MoT, is in fact extending its assistance in market development so that it will cover all hospitals that have been certified by the JCI and the NABH, or the National Accreditation Board, to continue boosting its number of health tourism patients.