ENORMOUS SCOPE OF MEDICAL TOURISM IN INDIA.

MEDICAL TREATMENT IN INDIA. There was a time when you could run a clinic with a doctor and one nurse. But the urban healthcare has undergone such a huge change that the earlier scenario might sound straight from the middle ages. The high-end hospitals are run more like luxury hotels and offer quality treatment. This coupled with cutting-edge research has ensured a plethora of job opportunities for the aspirants. So while the investment bankers or software engineers were left grappling with the pink slips this year, healthcare not only grew but continued spawning many industries. Healthcare IT, health insurance, hospital management, pharmaceutical, medical devices to medical tourism are just some of them. "There are four factors changing the face of medicine - corporatization, availability of high end technology, rise of medical insurance and rigorous government initiatives in the rural India," Currently it is estimated to be a USD 35 billion industry, it is expected to reach USD 150 billion by 2017. While world class treatment is becoming almost a norm in high-end hospitals, the cost of treatment is still way less than the developed countries. It costs a tenth and sometimes a sixteenth of what it does in the West. Thanks to this the medical tourism is the fastest growing segment of the tourism industry. It will attract 1.1 million patients by 2015. This means that healthcare management would become a sought after area as one needs competent professionals to deal with the marketing, operational and administrative side of the high-end hospitals. The areas which are seeing maximum growth and ground-breaking research are reproductive medicine, plastic surgery, endocrinology, oncology and cardiology. Apart from this, newer specialization are also in the pipeline. Emergency service has long been a recognized specialization in the developed countries. Recently, the Medical Council of India (MCI) gave it thumbs up and colleges across India have been notified to offer it as a post graduate discipline. Geriatric medicine or the care of the elderly is another area to watch out for in the future. "While it is already in existence in countries such as USA and UK, in India it would require more attention as life expectancy is on a rise and so are the ailments associated with the elderly," While the cities seem to be getting the best of the healthcare, the government has taken initiative to address rural areas as well. In 2005, the National Rural Health Mission was launched to provide accessible, affordable and accountable quality health services to the poor in the remotest of regions. In order to attract more doctors to the peripheral areas, incentives in terms of salaries and reservation in post graduate seats are on offer. But there is a major roadblock which most aspirants have to deal with - the lack of postgraduate seats. "According to the official estimates one in two graduates gets to do a postgraduate in medicine. But I fear that even these are optimistic figures,"