Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council announces one-stop portal for healthcare travellers

A one-stop portal on healthcare travel will be launching soon as part of Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council's (MHTC) initiative to catalyse on the growth of the country's healthcare travel industry, according to media reports.

The portal is set to give international healthcare travellers easy access to anything related to healthcare travelling, according to MHTC chief executive officer Mohd Daud Mohd Arif who was speaking at a media luncheon hosted by MHTC this week.

The portal is also projected to save international healthcare travellers from needing to hunt down accurate information on the internet endlessly.

This one-stop portal is one of the key initiatives that has been set up to help the country’s healthcare travel industry grow while embarking on the rebuilding phase of the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Blueprint 2021-2025 this year. Truly, the industry is growing rapidly.

By 2025, it has been predicted that there will be half-a-billion seniors over the age of 65 in Asia—roughly 10% of the population, according to a McKinsey's podcast. This represents a huge demographic shift that is unprecedented - a 14% growth from today. 

With the aging population, it is also predicted that the value of the Asia Pacific healthcare tourism market will be up to US$26.2 billion by 2027, showing a compound annual growth rate of 22.4% from 2022 to 2027, according to a Market Data Forecast's "Asia Pacific Medical Tourism Market Research Report."

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The main initiative of the MHTC is to focus on stressors in the healthcare travel ecosystem and on a patients' experience in Malaysia healthcare travel.

Another initiative that was brought up during the luncheon was the Health Facilitator Training Programme that will equip international tour and travel agents with essential knowledge and skills to enable them to become Malaysia Healthcare agents abroad, according to Mohd Daud.

He added that MHTC has plans to build Malaysia's first flagship medical tourism hospital and to establish more strategic partnerships while continuing to drive advocacy for the Malaysia healthcare brand.

Mohd Daud added that Malaysia sees significantly more affordable healthcare with the same or if not better quality services as countries such as Singapore, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and other European countries. He continued by saying that Malaysia has the added benefit of being able to communicate in different languages.

A+M has reached out to MHTC for a comment.

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