Designing a Medical Tourism Website: A Qualitative Study

Background: Informing plays a prominent role in attracting medical tourists. The enjoyment of proper medical in-formation systems is one of the most important tools for the attraction of medical tourists. Iran's ability in designing and implementing information networks has remained largely unknown. The current study aimed to explore informa-tion needs for designing a medical tourism website. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted in 2015 for designing Hospital Medical-Tourism Website (HMTW). A purposive sampling method was used and data were gathered using a semi-structured questionnaire. Totally, 12 faculty members and experts in the field of medical tourism were interviewed. Data were analyzed using the MAXQDA10 software. Results: Totally 41 sub-themes and 10 themes were identified. The themes included the introduction of hospital, gen-eral guide for patients, tourism information, information related to physicians in hospital, costs, treatment follow-up, online hospital appointment scheduling in website, statistics and news of hospital medical tourism, photo gallery and contacts. Among the themes, the participants highly emphasized four themes including costs (100%), tourism infor-mation (91.6%), information related to physicians in hospital, (83.3%) and treatment follow-up (83.3%). Conclusion: This profitable industry can be developed through considering information requirements for hospital medical tourism website.