Globalization has brought great change to the world economy and has had huge impact on India, especially in the nation's technological arena. While India has gained worldwide acclaim for its contributions to computer technology and software engineering, the contributions to medicine are equally impressive. Nowhere have those contributions been more dramatic than in the United States.

There are more than 37,000 Indian physicians who now belong to the American Medical Association, many of those having received training in both India and the U.S. Indian physicians are now following their colleagues in the tech and biotech markets, and returning to rapidly enhance the healthcare infrastructure in their home country.

Perhaps the best example of this trend was the founding of Escorts Heart Institute by Dr. Naresh Trehan. Dr. Trehan was a former assistant professor at New York University Medical School, earning $2 million a year from his Manhattan medical practice, before returning to India to found Escorts in 1988.

Although Escorts is equipped with same state-of-the-art technologies as the premier U.S. medical centers, the hospital is able to charge far less than U.S. counterparts because the pay scales are lower and the patient volumes much higher. For example, a magnetic resonance imaging scan (MRI) costs $60 at Escorts compared to more than $700 in New York. There is also a dramatic difference in the malpractice environment – a New York heart surgeon pays more than $100,000 a year in malpractice insurance, while his New Delhi counterpart pays only $4,000.

The premier Indian hospitals, such as Escorts, initially attracted a significant share of foreign business from people of Indian origin who lived in developed countries but maintained close ties to their homeland. Because Escorts developed a healthcare infrastructure that catered to the international patient, non-Indian patients from industrialized countries, especially from Britain and Canada weary of the long waits for elective surgery and overburdened health plans, sought cardiovascular services in increasing numbers.

In 2004, an estimated 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical procedures, and this number is projected to increase at a rate of 15% a year. If fact, the McKinsey consulting firm projects that India's international medical service could grow to $2.2 billion by 2012.

Indian physicians, long exposed to a multicultural world, are now playing a vital role in the technological transformation in the complex society of India. That transformation promises to have a huge future impact on patient choice in the United States, creating a true global health care option.