“It shows that costs can be substantially contained,” said Srinath Reddy, president of the Geneva-based World Heart Federation, of Shetty's approach. “It's possible to deliver very high quality cardiac care at a relatively low cost.”

Medical experts like Reddy are watching closely, eager to see if Shetty's driven cost-cutting can point the way for hospitals to boost revenue on a wider scale by making life-saving heart operations more accessible to potentially millions of people in India and other developing countries.

“The current price of everything that you see in healthcare is predominantly opportunistic pricing and the outcome of inefficiency,” Shetty, 60, said in an interview in his office in Bangalore, where he started his chain of hospitals, with the opening of his flagship center, Narayana Hrudayalaya Health City, in 2001.

Eoin Treacy's view The absolute cost of medical care is a much important arbiter in markets where there is no established government or private insurance network because at too high a price, demand simply does not exist. This represents quite a different environment from that which prevails in Europe and the USA where the priority is on access to services rather than the cost at which they are provided. We can expect this situation to persist, suggesting that cost saving innovation is more likely to develop in Asia than elsewhere. This creates the conditions for a significant arbitrage between markets which medical tourism seeks to avail of.

India's Apollo Hospitals remains in a consistent medium-term uptrend defined by a progression of ranges one above another, where it has found support in the region of the 200-day MA on successive occasions. Fortis Healthcare has been forming a base since early 2012 and will need to continue to hold above INR80 if recovery potential is to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Singapore's Raffles Medical Group completed a two-year range in January and had become quite overextended by April when it encountered resistance near S$3.50. It found support in the region of the 200-day MA from Mid June and it will need to continue to hold in the region of the trend mean if medium-term upside is to continue to be given the benefit of the doubt. Singapore and Malaysia listed IHH Group has held a progression of higher reaction lows since its IPO last year.

Thailand's Bangkok Dusit Medical Group accelerated higher from January and entered what is likely to be a lengthier process of consolidation from May. It found support in the region of the 200-day MA from late June and a sustained move below THB125 would be required to question medium-term potential for higher to lateral ranging. Bumrungrad Hospital has been mostly rangebound since accelerating higher a year ago. It found support in the region of THB70 from mid-June and a sustained move below that level would be required to question medium-term potential for continued higher to lateral ranging.

This is an interesting link reviewing some of the world's most popular medical tourism hospitals.