PurposeThe major purpose of this introduction to the special issue of Tourism Review on health and medical tourism is to outline some of main issues that exist in the academic literature in this rapidly developing field.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews relevant health and medical tourism and cognate literature.FindingsThe paper identifies some of the interrelationships between different areas of health and medical tourism, including wellness and wellbeing tourism, dental tourism, stem‐cell tourism, transplant tourism, abortion tourism, and xeno‐tourism. Key to defining these areas are the relationships to concepts of wellness and illness and the extent to which regulation encourages individuals to engage in cross‐border purchase of health services and products. Key themes that emerge in the literature include regulation, ethics, the potential individual and public health risks associated with medical tourism, and the relative lack of information on the extent of medical tourism.Social implicationsThe development of international medical tourism is demonstrated to have potentially significant implications for global public health.Originality/valueThe paper covers an extensive range of academic literature on international medical tourism which indicates the different approaches and emphases of research in different disciplines as well as the ideological and philosophical differences that exist with respect to health medical tourism. The paper also notes that some of the individual and public health risks of medical tourism are not usually incorporated into assessments of its potential economic benefits.