With healthcare tourism gearing up to be the next boom in the country, time has come for India to move beyond Ayurveda and other alternate medicines to high-level specialised medical treatment, according to a top travel industry official.

India has tremendous potential to capture a major part of international healthcare treatment as it could offer easily accessible healthcare services that were at par with international standards, chief operating officer, SITA Inbound Division, Himmat Anand, told reporters in Kochi.

India could offer specialised medical treatment like transplantation of vital organs, cancer treatment, neuro treatment and cardiac surgery, he said.

Qualified doctors and extremely low treatment costs made it an ideal proposition, he said.

While heart surgery cost approximately $20,000 abroad in India it was around $5,000. Knee joint replacement cost $16,000 as compared to $4,500 in India, he said.

The main demand for this segment would come from the 20 million Non-Resident Indians living all over the world.

Eyeing this potential, SITA World Travels had tied up with VedicIndia -- a medical NRI health management tourism company.

The size of the medical tourism industry stands between Rs 1,200 crore to Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 12-15 billion) and was growing at the rate of 30 per cent annually, Anand said.

At least 150,000 patients had shown interest for some medical treatment in India and 90 had already registered and paid up, he added.