Medical tourism occupies different spaces within national policy frameworks depending on which side of the transnational paradigm countries belong to, and how they seek to leverage it towards their developmental goals. This article draws attention to this policy divide in transnational healthcare through a comparative bibliometric review of policy research on medical tourism in select source (Canada, United States and United Kingdom) and destination countries (Mexico, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore), using a systematic search of the Web of Science (WoS) database and review of grey literature. We assess cross-national differences in policy and policy research on medical tourism against contextual policy landscapes and challenges, and examine the convergence between research and policy. Our findings indicate major disparities in development agendas and national policy concerns, both between and among source and destination countries. Further, we find that research on medical tourism does not always address prevailing policy challenges, just as the policy discourse oftentimes neglects relevant policy research on the subject. Based on our review, we highlight the limited application of theoretical policy paradigms in current medical tourism research and make the case for a comparative policy research agenda for the field.

中文翻译：

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跨国医疗保健中的南北政策鸿沟：对来源国和目的地国医疗旅游政策研究的比较回顾。

医疗旅游在国家政策框架内占据着不同的空间，具体取决于跨国范式国家属于哪一方，以及他们如何寻求将其用于实现其发展目标。本文通过对特定来源（加拿大，美国和英国）和目的地国家（墨西哥，印度，泰国，马来西亚和新加坡）的医疗旅游政策研究进行比较文献计量回顾，提请注意跨国医疗保健中的这一政策分歧，方法是使用对Web of Science（WoS）数据库进行系统搜索并查看灰色文献。我们根据上下文政策环境和挑战评估了医疗旅游政策和政策研究中的跨国差异，并研究了研究与政策之间的融合。我们的发现表明，在来源国和目的地国之间以及之间，在发展议程和国家政策方面存在重大差距。此外，我们发现，关于医疗旅游的研究并不总是能够解决当前的政策挑战，正如政策论述经常忽略了对该主题的相关政策研究一样。根据我们的评论，我们强调了理论政策范例在当前医疗旅游研究中的有限应用，并为该领域的比较政策研究议程提供了理由。