Editor’s Note : Kate Kyoungmi Kang, MHA, works as a medical tourism consultant at Ipock International Healthcare Consulting, LLC.  Her interests lie in growing the Korean Medical Tourism market and creating global infrastructure to facilitate the growing industry. As a recent master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) graduate, I am excited to be a part of the medical tourism industry, however, it was never a point of instruction in my program. The focus of our program was solely on the US healthcare system and preparing to work in a healthcare facility setting for newly minted MHA graduates. Over the past two years that it took to complete my MHA there were plenty of changes that came about in the US healthcare industry, but I believe that every future healthcare leader could benefit from a greater understanding of the medical tourism industry. Our professors constantly talked about transparency, quality, cost and service as cornerstones to improving healthcare in America, but they never mentioned the competition-driven medical tourism model of delivering care. There is something to be said for the global medical tourism industry actually having to rely on these principles to attract patients to travel abroad for healthcare. I grew up in Korea, and saw the Korean health system focus on these principles and, in turn, attract patients from surrounding countries. Working as a pharmacist in Korea, I saw a change in the healthcare market with a focus on the globalization of healthcare. I knew that I wanted to be a part of that change, and that is why I attended the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. I found it challenging to attain a master’s degree in America, but there was little attention to how the business of healthcare is changing globally. We were taught the fundaments of the US healthcare system, covering all of the required course work that is standard for any MHA program. There was an international health elective course, but the focus was on public health and communicable diseases. However, we never studied how other countries operate their health systems, and how that could be beneficial to our role as managers. I personally believe that there needs to be a greater focus on medical tourism as a competitive force in global healthcare. There are many innovative changes that are being driven by medical tourism that could directly apply to better serving American patients.  We were given the opportunity to meet David Boucher of Companion Global Healthcare who spoke to our class about the basics of medical tourism. This was welcomed and well received because the majority of the students had never heard of the term medical tourism, and the idea of patients traveling overseas for healthcare was foreign to them. I feel that we need to better understand how other healthcare systems deliver care, so that we can improve the transparency in care and the unsustainable costs in America. The most beneficial opportunity I had while in graduate school was attending several conferences focused on medical tourism. I attended the Center for Medical Tourism Research (CMTR) annual conference hosted by Dr. David Vequist who is director/founder and a professor at The University of the Incarnate Word. Even though the medical tourism industry is a very nascent market, this conference brought together a wide variety of industry leaders and academics to deliver very interesting scholarly research in all sectors of the industry. I believe that focusing on the academic side of medical tourism and creating more visibility to the student population will be incredibly beneficial. It was a great experience as a student to get to meet and discuss the opportunities and future of the medical tourism industry; this was a wonderful experience to inspire me to think globally about how we can improve healthcare across the world. It was a great networking experience to not only meet industry thought leaders, but also a small number of students who were interested in medical tourism as a career, including my current business partner, Brian Ipock. The globalization of healthcare is very real in its impact on the US healthcare system. I personally believe there needs to be more attention to this in several levels of medical education even beyond the MHA. One of the most beneficial things that could happen to open this industry up to new ambitious students and graduates is to target academic institutions and highlight not only the conferences with student friendly rates, but research opportunities and internships. Medical tourism and the globalization of healthcare are very real industry segments that need more attention from the MHA community and academia in general.