13–17 March in Moscow two medical tourism exhibition, INTERMED and MEDSHOW, were held as well as two workshops.

​​​​​​​IMTAA presented two themes: “Niches in medical tourism” and “Crash course on medical tourism for travel agencies”.

Korean International Medical Association (KIMA) and Medical Tourism Agencies Association of CIS signed the Memorandum of understanding at Intermed exhibition.

South Korean clinics play a key role for the next CIS regions: The Russian Far East, Eastern Siberia, and Kazakhstan. For example, 25 000 Russians visited in the South Korea Republic for medical care in 2016.

In fact, the government of South Korea spent the equivalent of $4 million dollars per year to promote medical tourism in 2009 and goes on supporting Korean clinics strong. Now Korean speakers in their presentations prefer to compare their medical performance indicators with famous US clinics like the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic.

Japan is discovering the CIS market and sent their representatives to Moscow exhibitions. Until recently Russian tourism market participants have not been aware of medical tourism opportunities in Japan.

IMTAA invited a special guest — Noriko Yamada, Japanese expert for the next webinar about medical tourism in Japan for Russian medical travel agencies. If you have any patients request for Japan clinics, you could connect them via EasyCase service in the nearest time.

Nowadays, Israel clinics are keen to cooperate with Russian partners directly without local Israel facilitating agencies. That’s why our team have met more the representatives of clinics than facilitators there, and we noticed a new trend — clinics set up a partnership without intermediators.

This year in December we have another noticeable medical tourism exhibition in Russia — MedTravelExpo. The Association IMTAA works on a new business program for the following exhibition. We are looking for new speakers, please contact us at info@imtaa.org.