Health is an often-overlooked issue in the touristic development of territories. However, the recent pandemic linked to Covid-19, by bringing the tourism sector to a halt, has revealed the importance of health issues for this economic sector. This book deals with the interaction between tourism and health in all its facets and offers a complete overview of the subject, the beginnings of which date back to Antiquity. The arguments presented here are based on a back-and-forth approach between tourism studies and health sciences. Various themes are thus addressed, such as health risks, health issues for travellers linked to tourism practices, medical tourism, health mobility and the global processes that accompany it, as well as the impact of tourism development on public health in destinations. A Back and Forth Between Tourism and Health highlights the need to include the health dimension in tourism planning and invites a paradigm shift in thinking about the tourism sector.

In a fully digitized world and hyper-connected society, artificial intelligence (AI) is developing more and more each day. In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems appropriate to examine the real or imagined progress of AI in terms of human health. Like artificial intelligence, health is a field that involves a wide range of research disciplines. In order to better define and understand these social and technical developments, Al, Healthcare and Law brings together the thoughts and analyses of doctors, lawyers, economists and computer scientists. Through a wide range of original overviews of the issues involved, the book addresses questions such as the development of telemedicine, the use of medical data, the increased human perspective or medical ethics, and takes a multi-disciplinary and accessible approach to questioning the relationship between humans and computers, between the intimate and the machine.

Health and Wellness Tourism takes an innovative look at this rapidly growing sector of today¿s thriving tourism industry. This book examines the range of motivations that drive this diverse sector of tourists, the products that are being developed to meet their needs and the management implications of these developments. A wide range of international case studies illustrate the multiple aspects of the industry and new and emerging trends including spas, medical wellness, life-coaching, meditation, festivals, pilgrimage and yoga retreats. The authors also evaluate marketing and promotional strategies and assess operational and management issues in the context of health and wellness tourism. This text includes a number of features to reinforce theory for advanced students of hospitality, leisure and tourism and related disciplines.

Patients Beyond Borders is the first comprehensive, easy-to-understand guide to medical tourism. Impartial and extensively researched, it is filled with authoritative and accessible advice - carefully culled from hundreds of resources around the world. Whether you're seeking dental work, heart surgery, orthopedics, cosmetic surgery, neurosurgery, or LASIK eye repair, Patients Beyond Borders is your best way to become an informed health traveler and get started on your medical travel journey.

A multidisciplinary international team examines the safety, ethics, and health implications of the emerging global market for health care, and the issues that arise when patients cross borders for medical procedures they cannot afford or access at home, from liposuction to kidney transplants. Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism: Understanding the Global Market for Health Services provides an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of the benefits and risks when health care becomes a global commodity. The collection includes contributions from leading scholars in law and public policy, medicine and public health, bioethics, anthropology, health geography, and economics. This timely and informative handbook looks at medical tourism from the perspective of some of the major regions that send and receive medical tourists, including the United States, the European Union, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Contributors examine how government agencies, medical tourism companies, international hospital chains, and other organizations promote medical tourism and the globalization of health care. The topics explored include the legal remedies available to medical tourists when procedures go awry; potential consequences when patients cross borders for medical procedures that are illegal in their home countries; the relationship of medical tourism to international spread of infectious disease; and the lack of adequate transnational policies and regulations governing the global market for health services.

In a time of rapid change for travel-related health interventions, this timely Handbook offers critical insights into the interrelationship between tourism, public health, and the wellbeing of local communities and tourists. Written with a global audience in mind, it features cutting-edge interdisciplinary research conducted by leading academics in tourism, public health, wellbeing, and social welfare.

The Routledge Handbook of Health Tourism provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the philosophical, conceptual and managerial issues in the field of health tourism with contributions from more than 30 expert academics and practitioners from around the world. Terms that are used frequently when defining health tourism, such as wellbeing, wellness, holistic, medical and spiritual, are analysed and explored, as is the role that health and health tourism play in quality-of-life enhancement, wellbeing, life satisfaction and happiness. An overview is provided of health tourism facilities such as thermal waters, spas, retreats and wellness hotels and the various challenges inherent in managing these profitably and sustainably. Typologies are given not only of subsectors of health tourism and related activities but also of destinations, such as natural landscapes, historic townscapes or individual resources or attractions around which whole infrastructures have been developed. Attention is paid to some of the lifestyle changes that are taking place in societies which influence consumer behaviour, motivations and demand for health tourism, including government policies, regulations and ethical considerations. This significant volume offers the reader a comprehensive synthesis of this field, conveying the latest thinking and research. The text is international in focus, encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study and will be an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in health tourism.