Medical tourism in India will surge heavily if global insurance companies cover treatment: Apollo Hospitals

According to reports by Business Standard and BusinessLine, if global insurance companies begin covering the treatment costs of foreign patients coming to India, the number of medical tourists could witness a massive surge. This statement has been made by a top official of Apollo Hospitals.

Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of the Garmin Health Summit held in Bangkok, Apollo Hospitals Joint Managing Director Suneeta Reddy stated that not only enabling but encouraging international usage by global insurance companies would help save a lot of money for patients.

She added that we have requested the government to lead a delegation to work with insurance companies. If they start covering, you will see a large section of the Western world coming here. We have a significant number of NRIs coming in and this is a win-win situation for all parties.

According to official statistics, the global medical travel market was valued at approximately $115.6 billion in the year 2022 and is estimated to reach around $286.1 billion by the year 2030. In this growing global scenario, India has emerged as one of the most important destinations. Industry estimates based on government figures put the medical tourism market at approximately $8.7 billion in the year 2025 and $16.2 billion by the year 2030.

The preventive health check-up market has grown multifold over the past few years, and Apollo Hospitals alone conducted over 40 lakh such check-ups in the year 2025. Suneeta Reddy stated that Apollo started preventive health care 40 years ago with our health check-up. Gradually others have emulated it and now you have many players offering such packages.

Apollo Hospitals is not viewing health check-ups as a pure business model, but as a clinical model leading to deep prevention and early detection. She stated that I think Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable this. Patient knowledge and the consumerism that is happening is another factor bringing awareness.

What is happening in India is that patients come and they are sick. What we are finding in preventive checks is sometimes very advanced, where the next day you need an angiogram or stent, or have advanced cancer. A preventive check is not just cholesterol. It is really looking at the whole person and over time, longitudinally, so it is an engagement model.

In the power and technology sector, the world is increasingly adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a tool for health, and India has also started catching up, though a long way remains to be traversed. According to Suneeta Reddy, this practice should begin using AI to pick up symptoms and use this digital signal to reprogram a person's daily plan.

There is genetics and there is epigenetics. Epigenetics is the result of your lifestyle on your genes. And this has started appearing as gene expression in your telomeres. Studying telomere length gives you an indication of longevity. Therefore, our health check-up realistically monitors this extensively and creates corrective plans for us.

Apollo Hospital is looking at the operating system and rebuilding it as native AI first to automate unnecessary tasks. You integrate interpretation, knowledge, algorithms into a clinical intelligence engine in daily care. Then you share and do data research to get net new knowledge. And you combine this with devices like AI embedded in ultrasound probes or with digital layers. So, we are looking at operational levels, clinical risk prediction, clinical scoring to reach better medicine and clinical research.

US-based Garmin's digital health solutions arm, Garmin Health, organized a two-day health summit in Bangkok last week, bringing together medtech innovators and collaborators from around the world to showcase their products.

As background, Apollo Hospitals is one of India's leading healthcare institutions, which has played a vital role in medical services and preventive health check-up sectors in the country for decades.