HealthGlobe Medical Travel Blog

Nearly everyone who uses the internet has looked at items on eBay and many people have either bought or sold something. So what does that have to do with Medical Tourism?

When you get right down to it, I am a business strategist. It pervades my thinking when I am working at HealthGlobe and when I work with my other Carter Consulting Partners clients. Because sometimes what makes business most interesting isn’t what’s different, but what is similar between vastly different industries.

So back to eBay. This company has become the largest person-to-person commerce engine on the internet because it has built a brand and a service that individuals implicitly trust. They have taken great pains to be the trusted auction site and it has ultimately brought interpersonal commerce to a whole new level, transforming it from a neighborhood enterprise to a global trading system.

Let’s face it, buying something on eBay isn’t like buying something from your neighbor or someone at a local swap meet. You can’t touch the things you buy on eBay. You can’t look into the eye of the seller and make that critical, subjective determination that their motives are pure. You have to make do with pictures and descriptions. But you trust eBay as a brand, so you can look the other way, and in almost every case it all works out just fine.

Now, anybody who knows anything about Medical Tourism knows that the most critical issue that the entire industry is facing as an obstacle to tremendous growth is trust (and yes, I am saying that the industry is not currently growing tremendously despite any propaganda you may have read to the contrary). Credibility. Legitimacy. It is what I spend more time thinking about than any other issue at HealthGlobe.

Let’s take the example of our most popular service at HealthGlobe: IVF. We provide IVF services through our HealthGlobe brand as well as through our newly-introduced InVitroGlobe brand. We use only the best doctors working at only the most advanced clinics in the world. They have success rates that are far higher than what you find in the US (for a table of success rates as published by the US Centers for Disease Control, click here) and we use public domain reports as a comparison to reduce confusion. A much better service at a fraction of the price; generally 30-50% of what you would pay here in the US.

But even with all that, without our clients’ trust, it’s all just pictures presented alongside facts and figures. Once they decide to make the leap, however, we hear things like this, “I still am amazed at how perfect the whole trip was. I love telling this story to anyone who will take the time to hear it. I want everyone to know about medical tourism, a hugely under-tapped and much needed service for those of us in the US who want or need medical service but can’t afford it on our home turf. Very, very good to know that plenty of well-trained and competent MDs in clean, beautiful, modern hospitals exist worldwide, poised and ready to receive those of us who need them.” What a great testimonial from a Registered Nurse who used HealthGlobe to travel for care.

So with our relentless focus on the best service in the industry and tirelessly working toward a widely-recognized trust in our brand, we will continue to use the values of the successful pioneers of new industries as HealthGlobe’s guiding light in the new industry of Medical Tourism.