Page 340 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 4

CPS2258 Siti Norfadillah Md Saat et al.

Health Tourism in Malaysia: Does this industry
provide a catalyst for economic growth?
Siti Norfadillah Md Saat, Zainuddin Ahmad
Department of Statistics Malaysia

Abstract
Medical or health tourism is one of the new growing industry in global market
and Malaysia is heading towards positioning the country to be an attractive
destination for health tourism. In 2017, the number of healthcare travellers
visit to Malaysia posted a growth of 12.7 per cent compared to 2016. Whilst,
Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recorded a growth of 5.9 per cent in
2017. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between real
Malaysia’s GDP and healthcare travellers that visit to Malaysia for seeking the
treatment. This study covers the quarterly data from Q1 2012 to Q4 2017.
Unrestricted VAR model is used to determine short term relationship between
the variables. Granger causality test is employed to investigate the causality
between economic growth and the healthcare travellers. The results show that
healthcare traveller’s lag one is significant to explain healthcare travellers.
However, there is no statistical evidence that healthcare travellers influence
real GDP of Malaysia. In term of causality, healthcare travellers Granger cause
real GDP.

Keywords
Health tourism; medical tourism; healthcare; economic growth

1. Introduction
The terms of health tourism is not new in healthcare industry. It is often
used synonymously with the term “medical tourism,” which is a part of the
same spectrum. The Medical Tourism Association’s defines medical tourism as
when people who live in one country, travel to another country to receive
medical, dental and surgical care while at the same time receiving equal to or
greater care than they would have in their own country, and are traveling for
medical care because of affordability, better access to care or a higher level of
quality of care.
Globalisation has made health tourism possible and continues to flourish.
The encouraging development of this industry can provide significant
opportunity through a combination of key services sector such as health,
accommodation, travels/leisure, food & beverages and transportation.
Furthermore, health tourism will provide more job opportunities which may

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