Shri Prataprao Jadhav, Hon’ble Minister of State (IC), Ministry of Ayush and Minister of State, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, announced today that the government is developing a comprehensive online portal for Medical Value Travel (mvt) to consolidate its position as a global healthcare destination.

At FICCI’s Medical Value Travel Conference, Minister Jadhav revealed plans for a digital ecosystem to integrate hospitals, facilitators, travel agents, hotels, translators, and support services on a single platform to enhance patient experience.

The government strategy includes expanding healthcare ecosystems beyond metropolitan cities into tier-2 and tier-3 regions while strengthening collaboration with private players to enhance end-to-end services, including treatment coordination, travel arrangements, and post-treatment care.

Speaking occasionally, NITI Aayog member Prof Vinod K Paul emphasised how deregulation is “pervading through the narrative” and called for industry suggestions to reduce healthcare facilities’ compliance burdens. “We are systematically looking at how compliance burden for creation of facilities in cities, in towns, and Tier 3 cities can be reduced,” said Dr.Paul, urging stakeholders to guide this process.

Paul stressed that visa facilitation was “a critical enabler” while emphasising transparency and trust-building. Dr. Paul highlighted legal challenges in telemedicine: ” When I advise a patient in Ethiopia, Nepal, or Finland, what is my liability? India should lead this discussion. We are the superpower in telemedicine.”

He also advocated for government-to-government arrangements—”which assures a lot of confidence to both sides”—and called for enhancing “the culture of accreditation and standards” to demonstrate quality to international patients.

In 2024, the MVT market in India reached $7.69 billion and is projected to exceed $14.31 billion by 2029. The country currently commands 18 per cent of the global MVT market and ranks tenth in the Medical Value Travel Index.

Secretary of the Ministry of Ayush, Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, advocated for expanding the scope of medical value travel to include India’s traditional medicine systems and supported the development of a “clinical medical travel circuit” similar to existing tourism circuits.

“The AYUSH sector in India, including medical value travel, is worth nearly $30bn, with the entire sector, including products and services, reaching $55bn,” said Kotecha, citing a recent study by Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS).

Noting that India ranks seventh globally in medical value travel but 20th in wellness tourism, Kotecha pointed out that “globally, medical travel is growing at the rate of 10.8%, but we are much behind. We need to think about how to leverage the opportunity.”

Director General of the Ministry of Tourism, Mugdha Sinha, revealed that medical tourism has remained steady at about 6% of total foreign tourist arrivals, with 644,000 visitors travelling on e-medical and e-AYUSH visas from 20 countries. “People from the developed world come to India for weightless access to specialists and super-specialists, while those from developing countries come for affordability,” she explained.

She called for improvements to the e-visa system, noting that while purpose-based visas for medical travel and AYUSH are available to 174 countries, “the entire process of applying for a visa on the AYUSH portal needs to be seamless, expeditious and overhauled systematically.”

Sinha emphasised the need to leverage “India’s IT prowess” to build “a more efficient, encrypted, integrated and multilingual platform” for stakeholders while also addressing privacy concerns to “protect patients from all kinds of cyber frauds and misuse of their sensitive data.”

Dr Upasana Arora, Chair of FICCI’s Medical Value Travel Committee and Managing Director of Yashoda Super Speciality Hospitals, highlighted India’s holistic approach to healthcare. “India is known for holistic healing. We are not providing only modern science but also different traditional systems like Unani and Ayurveda,” Arora said.

Dr Raajiv Singhal, Co-Chair of the FICCI MVT Committee and Founding Member, Managing Director, and CEO of Marengo Asia Hospitals, emphasised that India’s approach to medical value travel is evolving beyond patient acquisition to building international partnerships. “We are looking at partnerships under the concept of clinical corridors where we can teach, train, and treat people from various countries,” said Singhal.

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