ANALYSIS OF BARRIERS IN MEDICAL TOURISM DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Yıl 2021, Cilt: 1 Sayı: 1, 10 - 20, 28.02.2021

Saliha Karadayı Usta , Şeyda Serdar Asan

Öz

Medical tourism is emerging both as a business and as an academic research area that provides patients access to
medical institutions for treatment/rehabilitation outside their country of residence. Since the transnational
medical travels are interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical tourism, especially the mostly
requested elective low-risk treatments like dentistry, laser eye surgery, esthetics and hair transplantation are
almost come to a standstill. Therefore, this study aims to identify the barriers to the development and execution
of medical tourism during the COVID-19 Pandemic and to analyze the causal relationships between these barriers.
In order to that, text mining and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) analysis were conducted. Text mining was
applied to the medical tourism related tweets in English from January to June 2020 via RapidMiner software and
the current barriers in medical tourism were identified. The relationships between these barriers were examined
via expert evaluations. Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) was applied to construct a structural model of the
barriers that presents how the barriers are related and the hierarchy between them. According to the hierarchical
structure the prominent obstacles were: restrictions on transportation, disruption of hospital operations,
increasing complexity of medical tourism services and unexpected fluctuations in exchange rates. The main
contributions of the study can be listed as: determining the barriers to medical tourism under pandemic conditions
by using text mining, and the analysis of the relationships between these barriers with interpretive structural
modeling and revealing the root barriers.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Medical tourism, Barrier Analysis, Text mining, Interpretive Structural Modeling

PANDEMİ DÖNEMİNDE MEDİKAL TURİZM ENGELLERİ ANALİZİ

Öz

Kişilerin ikamet ettikleri ülke dışında tedavi / rehabilitasyon görmek için tıbbi kurumlara erişimlerini sağlayan
medikal turizm, hem iş hem de araştırma alanı olarak son yıllarda gittikçe artan bir şekilde dikkat çekmektedir.
Uluslararası tıbbi seyahatlerin COVID-19 salgınına yönelik önlemler kapsamında kesintiye uğramasıyla, medikal
turizm kapsamındaki diş tedavisi, lazer göz ameliyatı, estetik ve saç ekimi gibi isteğe bağlı ve düşük risk taşıyan
tedavilere olan talep de duraklamıştır. Bu bağlamda bu çalışma, pandemi döneminde medikal turizm ile ilgili
engelleri tespit etmeyi ve bu engeller arasındaki nedensel ilişkileri analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Çalışmada
yöntem olarak metin madenciliği ve Yorumlayıcı Yapısal Modelleme analizlerine başvurulmuştur. RapidMiner
yazılımının kullanımıyla, medikal turizm ile ilgili Ocak-Haziran 2020 arasında atılan twitter metinleri incelenmiş ve
medikal turistler tarafından ifade edilen engel ve zorluklar belirlenmiştir. Engeller arasındaki yapısal etkileşim
uzman değerlendirmeleri aracılığıyla Yorumlayıcı Yapısal Modelleme ile değerlendirilmiş ve son olarak bu
engellerin birbirini nasıl etkilediği ve aralarındaki hiyerarşik ilişki ortaya konmuştur. Buna göre öne çıkan engeller
ulaşıma getirilen kısıtlamalar, hastanelerin işleyişinin aksaması, medikal turizm hizmetlerinin işleyişinin
karmaşıklaşması ve döviz kurlarında beklenmedik dalgalanmalar olmuştur: Çalışmanın ana katkıları metin
madenciliği kullanılarak Pandemi koşullarında medikal turizmin önündeki engellere dikkat çekilmesi ve engeller
arası ilişkilerin yorumlayıcı yapısal modelleme ile analizinin ardından kök engellerin ortaya konmasıdır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Medikal turizm, Engel Analizi, Metin madenciliği, Yorumlayıcı Yapısal Modelleme

Kaynakça

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