What can Google tell us about medical tourism?

Who knows what is happening in the area of health? Who knows what conditions and disorders are causing people problems? Who knows what is happening on medical tourism?

Google!

Google is a treasure trove of information about how people are behaving and what issues are on them. Google records the activity online and search behavior of hundreds of millions of users. He knows what you and I do the web every day. He knows where you are, in most cases. And from the data that Google collects, he can draw conclusions. And so can you.

A recent example in the health sector is Google flu Trends. Google realised that some search terms are good indicators of activity of influenza. Aggregated Google search data Google Flu Trends uses to estimate the activity of influenza in a u.s. State until two weeks faster than the Federal Centers for disease control and prevention.

Outside the area of health, a British web Intelligence company was able to predict the winner of a TV talent show, based on the online activities of people who were watching the show and researching competitors online.

So what does Google know about medical tourism ....? Probably more than most people in business.

Let's take a simple example. Suppose I want to know what are the countries most popular for cosmetic surgery for UK patients traveling to treatment.

I can analyze the activity search UK Internet users, noting the relative number of searches for cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery that incorporate the location or names of countries.

I then combine all these data to create a search volume in the country related to cosmetic surgery related phrases. For each country, so I can calculate a portion of the total volume of searches. And we come to the table on the right.

Interesting things .... Now, he didn't tell me what countries people really go (the same way that Google Flu Trends doesn't really tell you that people have influenza), but I'm willing to bet it's not a bad indicator. And probably a much better indicator than the top of the head data that many "experts" toss around.

So, if your work on medical tourism marketing, you need to consult the new guru medical tourism-Google Inc.