In the lead up to the 2016 fiscal year, the Dubai Health Authority’s (DHA) initial expectation was to attract 170,000 medical tourists during the year. However, fuelled by the success of the creation of the Dubai Health Experience (DXH), a brand conceived by the DHA to build strategic partnerships with both the private and government sector to strengthen Dubai’s position on the world’s medical tourism map, the government has reported that this milestone was exceeded and the ambitious goal of attracting 500,000 medical tourists to the emirate by 2020 is fully on track.

According to Dr Layla Al Marzouqi, the director of Health Regulation at the DHA and the Dubai Medical Tourism Council, medical tourism is expected to boost the Dubai economy by AED2.6 billion a year by 2020, with the annual revenue generated expected to increase by 13% year-on-year.

“Our strategy is to welcome and attract medical tourists from countries within a four to eight-hour travel distance from Dubai including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the United Kingdom, Africa and the Asian markets, particularly India and Pakistan, as we have already witnessed a large number of medical tourists coming to Dubai from these countries,” she explains.

Al Marzouqi believes that one of the key differentiating factors for Dubai is a clear patient-centric vision. With a brand based on what she calls the three T’s—talent, transparency and trust—Dubai is focusing on building upon its reputation for the high quality of healthcare services it offers. This, she says, has been recognized on a global level and is reflected in Dubai’s position as elected Chairmanship of Global Healthcare Travel Council. “Through DXH, we have devised many elements that ensure the continuity of quality, starting from our website www.dxh.ae and the DXH mobile app which gives access to vetted healthcare facilities and professionals as well as the transparent health packages that clearly mention exclusions and inclusions,” she notes. “We have also put in place an extended travel insurance program for medical tourism which covers unforeseen complications that may arise from any treatment that happens in Dubai as well as an accessible e-complaint system where issues can be raised and dealt with appropriately.”

Mediclinic Dubai Mall, one of the city’s largest outpatient facilities located in Downtown Dubai, is part of the consortium of 25 healthcare providers that make up the DXH Group and, according to Mediclinic Middle East & Al Noor Hospitals Group chief marketing officer Peter Menelaou, DXH has been instrumental in streamlining the medical tourism initiative in Dubai. “Not only does the initiative help us create awareness about our facilities and specialist services, but it is instrumental in encouraging inbound medical tourism by expediting visas for medical tourists and creating a sense of confidence for residents who are looking to receive world-class treatment without having to travel aboard or return home,” he says.

Indeed, Dubai has many virtues including a multi-cultural healthcare sector with over 110 nationalities, an extensive transportation system and a well-run hospitality industry that caters to the full spectrum of travelers with differing budgets and expectations, that together with the DXH initiative, create a favorable environment for medical tourism; all part of the strategic developmental plan forming Dubai’s vision 2021.

However, according to Jeremy Panacheril, who is a partner at the Healthcare and Life Sciences Transaction Advisory Services at EY, while medical tourism in Dubai has grown and will continue to grow as delivery capacity increases and more global patients realise the potential that Dubai offers, the reality is that it is probably taking a lot longer than most people initially thought. “There are several reasons for this, including perceptions of quality and cultural predispositions, but one inhibitor to faster growth is actually structural,” he explains. “Anchoring any hospital business model should be a sufficient volume of catchment area patients i.e. that the hospital must have the ability to generate patient volume locally.” Applying that logic to Dubai, where a lot of the patient population is still likely to go abroad or home for treatment for complex conditions, the opportunity to generate returns for the treatment of complex conditions, which require more investment, is ultimately reduced. “Dubai, as a result, is able to capture patient volume for elective procedures, which have less complexity, are more commoditized and lower revenue value per patient—and this will continue to grow,” he notes.

In addition to setting a target for the number of patients, Panacheril believes it is important to be able to establish goals based on Dubai’s relative competitive advantage for specific healthcare outcomes and treatments. He feels that meeting both volume and value goals is the only way Dubai will grow globally into the medical tourism destination it aspires to become. “Implementing better measures of quality and aligning this with payer dynamics is imperative to improve Dubai’s healthcare market and one of the positive consequences of that would be on medical tourism,” he adds. “But this should not be done only to attract medical tourists—it will also improve health outcomes for patients in Dubai today.”

Even as the industry grapples with growing pains, one thing remains clear. Dubai’s medical tourism strategy is firmly rooted in years of studying other medical tourism destinations, painstaking carrying out price benchmarking exercises and carefully identifying target markets, to ultimately ensure that Dubai’s attractiveness as a medical tourism destination is based on a sophisticated infrastructure and the adoption of international standards for patient care.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Forbes Middle East on Monday November 27th, 2017 http://bit.ly/ForbesMiddleEastMedical