RECENT MEDICAL TOURISM RESEARCH IN THE WEB OF SCIENCE CORE COLLECTION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21273453Keywords:
medical tourism; health tourism; CiteSpace; destination management; wellness tourism; SDG3Abstract
Medical tourism has entered a post-pandemic development stage. Destination competitiveness,
patient satisfaction, service quality, clinical safety, the recovery of wellness tourism, and digital continuous
care are increasingly seen as interconnected issues, rather than isolated market factors. This paper uses 535
articles on the topic of medical tourism retrieved from the Web of Science database between 2024 and June
30, 2026, and analyzes the knowledge structure and cutting-edge issues of recent medical tourism research
using CiteSpace keyword co-occurrence maps. The results show that medical tourism research has formed a
research network centered on medical tourism and health tourism, with satisfaction, healthcare, management,
destination, service quality, wellness tourism, and impact as important nodes. The field is shifting from simple
research on low-cost cross-border surgeries and destination marketing to a comprehensive research framework
that is patient-centered and considers destination governance, healthcare quality, risk control, sustainable
development, and digital continuous care. The study argues that the competitive advantage of future medical
tourism destinations should not come solely from prices and hospital infrastructure, but rather from transparent
service processes, auditable clinical quality, cross-cultural communication, postoperative follow-up, data
security, and transnational regulatory cooperation.
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