Editorial: Global Health and Medical Travel

Travel for medical care is increasing globally. This ranges from patients with urgent medical needs who must travel abroad for specialist care, to medical tourists who elect to have certain procedures abroad. While estimated increases of patients traveling abroad for medical care vary, more empirical research and evidence is needed to understand the scale, reasons, and consequences of travel. The preceding Research Topic has been compiled to reflect significant gaps in evidence and policy specifically for medical travel, referring here to care that is essential to maintain quality of life, largely influenced by the Global Health Access Policy (GHAP) project, which was carried out from 2012 to 2015. The editors had previously called for more scientific evidence to support the development of such policies and more nuanced definitions rather than interchangeable use of “medical tourism” and “medical travel” (1). We noted that, prior to the GHAP project, research on medical travel had generally been limited to medical tourism or simplified exchanges between few locations over a limited scope of care. Studies lacked extensive review required to inform medical travel policies for those with urgent needs and did not consider factors such as patient protection and indemnification, psychological support during rehabilitation, and long-term liability (2). For this reason, this Topic was convened to invite studies that contribute evidence toward the development of such policies specific to medical travel, which emphasizes more critical care than much of the work on medical tourism. The following is a summary of arguments made therein.