Universitas Airlangga lecturer dr Niko Azhari Hidayat Sp BTKV(K) created innovation and a breakthrough in the health sector. The Industrial Engineering lecturer developed ‘Medical Tourism Indonesia’.
‘Medical Tourism Indonesia’ is a platform for medical treatment packaged in tourism activity. Cited from medicaltourism.id page, the platform offers comprehensive health features such as end-to-end services from pick-up service for medical tourists, accommodation, drop-off service to medical facilities, recovery tour trips, and taking them back home.
“Medical Tourism Indonesia is the ‘Traveloka’ of hospitals,” dr Niko said to UNAIR NEWS on Friday, September 9, 2022.
This innovation is claimed to bring in medical tourists from abroad and push down the number of Indonesians who prefer medical treatment abroad. According to the International Medical Travel Journal (IMTJ), approximately 3 million people get medical treatment overseas, which costs more than 100 Trillion Rupiah annually.
“This is how we support the nation’s economy through medical and tourism. People no longer have to get treatment overseas,” said dr. Niko.
Launched in 2021, the platform was initially in the form of social media for providing medical information. However, to offer wider impacts and excellent features—such as price transparency in treatment, dr. Niko and his team started developing the Medical Tourism Indonesia application, which is now available to the public.
“We have already prepared the payment (system, ed), the mechanism is the last feature to be improved,” said dr. Niko.
Innovation Scale-up
The doctor said that Medical Tourism Indonesia is the scaled-up version of his preliminary breakthrough. Previously, the secretary of UNAIR Research and Community Service Institute (LPPM) had also launched vascularindonesia.com, a digital platform for treating patients with blood vessel problems.
“My scale-up program is not within the finance sector only. The program I developed was called ‘Vascular Indonesia Health Travel’ in 2020 which eventually transformed into medical tourism. Medical tourism becomes the second platform,” said dr. Niko.
Every platform he builds is a service to the community. The doctor wants to help provide convenience and positive contributions to society.