A Collaborative Framework for Medical Tourism Service Supply Chain Operations

Abstract

Medical tourism is a combination of medical and tourism services that attracts medical travelers to destination countries. Collaboration between the members of the medical tourism service supply chain (MTSSC) is important to maintain a sustainable business. Thus, in this chapter, the authors use Collaborative Planning Forecasting Replenishment (CPFR) model as a reference and adapt it for medical tourism services. The focus of this chapter is on the collaboration between an assistance company and a medical institution. This chapter suggests a collaborative MTSSC operations framework including steps, tools, and techniques for collaboration arrangement and joint business plans, demand planning and forecasting, balancing the demand and capacity, the execution phase, and the final performance measurement. It describes how multiple supply chain partners intelligence could be combined to fulfill demand of medical tourists by aligning the planned actions and available resources with the real execution process by a set of tools and techniques.