Medical Tourism in Argentina is on the rise with companies like RefreshMed, Xetica and Procrearte in the lead.

Medical Tourism is on the rise with companies like RefreshMed, Xetica and Procrearte in the lead.

For the past three years, “medical tourism” has been a loosely-defined concept occasionally surfacing on the pages of popular magazines. In 2006, Time ran a story titled “Outsourcing Your Heart,” while Entrepreneur named “medical tourism” to its 2007 Hot List of emerging trends and business models for aspiring entrepreneurs. Fast forward to 2009 and the industry buzz around medical tourism is large enough to warrant a World Medical Tourism & Global Health Congress, being held next week in L.A.  Going forward, Argentina is poised to capture a greater share of outsourced U.S. health care over traditional destinations like Inida, Thailand and Singapore. Similarities in time zones, language and countless tourism options are just a few of Argentina’s competitive advantages. And just to make it official, Argentina’s National Tourism Agency, finally decided to go after this $60 billion global industry with a marketing campaign (Full Story) called Medicina Argentina.

ikalThe Houston Chronicle raises a fine malbec and toasts the love story of Jerry Ward, a local Oracle software consultant and, Sandra Beltran, a female marketing executive from El Salvador. They first met in 2001 at Ikal, a coastal resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Today they are married, and a passion for great wine eventually led them to Argentina where they are bottling a line of wines in Mendoza’s Valle de Uco called Ikal 1150. (“Ikal” is Mayan for poetry, and 1,150 refers to the vineyard’s elevation.) The Chronicle notes, “They appear to be the only Texans producing wine in Mendoza, where, a half-century on, the high-altitude vineyards may well be considered the world’s best.” To launch the venture, the couple joined forces with Argentine Daniel Silva: a wise move considering the logistics and paperwork involved in importing wine into the U.S. But fear not, this love story has a happy ending, according to The Chronicle: “The Ikal wines have been warmly embraced in Houston.”

 

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Mendoza

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