A decade of medical tourism research: looking back to moving forward

Purpose This article aims to know the direction of current research based on the previous research in the last ten years (2012–2021). Design/methodology/approach Text mining was integrated with a network and content analysis as part of the mix methodological approach. The scientific articles, on the other hand, were assembled on Litmaps through web scraping. This process selected 86 articles about medical tourism published between 2012 and 2021. This study employed AntConc, RStudio and Gephi tools for data analysis and visualization. Findings A total of 138 articles were identified through Litmaps using web scraping and 86 studies met the criteria. The trend of medical tourism research is a positive sign for tourism and health industries; this is the beginning to recognize the importance of elaborating on these two topics. Several researchers have frequently studied issues of destination, hospital, development, quality, stakeholders, surgery, service, economics and policy. Policymakers must establish a medical tourism ecosystem to accommodate all stakeholders in this industry. This study also recommends focusing on supply and institution for medical tourism future research. Research limitations/implications This literature review presents research trends on medical tourism in 2012–2021 based solely on articles available on the Litmaps search engine. If the time span is extended and the sources of articles are expanded there will be more literature available for analysis. The articles obtained are also only articles published in English due to the language limitations of the author. Practical implications Policymakers must establish a medical tourism ecosystem to accommodate all stakeholders in this industry. Stakeholders must work together to provide medical tourism package therefore people can get their health services while visiting available tourist areas. Originality/value The literary study of medical tourism over 10 years is considered the most recent systematic literature review.