Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Development of Digital Business Models in Health Tourism: A Systematic Review

Growing demand for high-quality, affordable healthcare services has made health tourism one of the fastest-growing segments of the tourism industry, particularly in developing countries. Despite this growth, the transformative role of digitalization in enabling entrepreneurial activity and business model innovation in health tourism has received little systematic attention. This gap limits our understanding of the interplay among digitalization, entrepreneurship, and innovation in contexts where healthcare infrastructure and digital technologies are evolving simultaneously. To address this gap, this study conducted a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles published between 2020 and 2025, searching the Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ScienceDirect databases. Of the 1,320 articles initially identified, 84 were selected for final analysis after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The theoretical framework integrated Shane’s opportunity discovery theory, Sarasvathy’s effectuation logic, and Ardichvili’s opportunity development model, enabling a multilevel analysis of environmental drivers, entrepreneurial micro-processes, and the dynamic interaction between individuals and their environment. The findings of the study indicated that technologies such as telemedicine, smart platforms, and mobile health applications not only created new opportunities but also served as active instruments for designing and developing novel digital business models. By proposing an integrated and dynamic conceptual model, this study elucidated the interplay among digitalization, entrepreneurial processes, and emerging types of digital business models, offering valuable theoretical and practical insights for researchers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers in digital health tourism.