NEW YORK–The Caribbean re­gion can boost its bot­tom line by de­vel­op­ing a med­ical tourism prod­uct that takes ad­van­tage of its brand as a great va­ca­tion des­ti­na­tion, its prox­im­i­ty to North Amer­i­ca as well as its tourism fa­cil­i­ties, beach­es and of course, the year-round warm weath­er of the re­gion.That's ac­cord­ing to Dr Paul An­gelchik, founder of Amer­i­can World Clin­ics, and Collin Chil­dress, CEO of Glob­al Med­Choic­es.

Their com­ments come as both pre­pare to dis­cuss the po­ten­tial of med­ical tourism for the Caribbean in-depth at a pan­el at In­vest Caribbean Now 2014.ICN, the biggest glob­al in­vest­ment sum­mit on the Caribbean out­side of the re­gion, is set for the Har­vard Club in New York City from 11.30 am to 6.30 pm June 4 un­der the pa­tron­age of Hol­ly­wood Ac­tor Ma­lik Yo­ba.

"The op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Caribbean in gen­er­al is that it car­ries a pos­i­tive con­no­ta­tion in the view of many for hav­ing friend­ly peo­ple, nat­ur­al beau­ty and a rep­u­ta­tion as an en­joy­able, up­scale des­ti­na­tion with great vis­i­tor ameni­ties in many lo­ca­tions," said Dr An­gelchik."I have no doubt that the Caribbean can be a ma­jor re­gion for MT ac­tiv­i­ties if there is fol­low through on the ini­tial buzz of en­thu­si­asm that has de­fined the in­dus­try to date."

"Cre­at­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion through in­tro­duc­ing a sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and growth in­dus­try, such as med­ical tourism, to the Caribbean can help soft­en the im­pact of cycli­cal North Amer­i­can eco­nom­ic down­turns in tourism on the Caribbean mar­ket and lever­age the sup­ply and de­mand is­sues that are dri­ving pa­tient flow off­shore from Cana­da and the US," added CEO Chil­dress.

In 2011, the to­tal im­pact of the med­ical tourism in­dus­try con­tributed nine per cent of glob­al GDP and ac­count­ed for 255 mil­lion jobs in the world.In the next decade, med­ical tourism is ex­pect­ed to grow by an av­er­age year­ly of four per cent, con­tribut­ing up to 10 per cent of fu­ture glob­al GDP.Even­tu­al­ly, by 2022, it is es­ti­mat­ed that 328 mil­lion jobs will be cre­at­ed in the med­ical tourism in­dus­try: equal to 10 per cent of jobs in the world.

CaribPR Wire