Health care or healthcare is the avoidance, cure, and management of illness and the safeguarding of mental and physical well-being throughout the services obtainable by the medical, nursing, and related health professions. The organized stipulation of such services may comprise a health care system. Before the phrase "healthcare" became well-liked, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease.

The healthcare business is one of the world's biggest and fastest-growing industries. Consuming further than 10 percent of disgusting domestic product of most urbanized nations, health care can structure a huge part of a country's economy. In 2003, health care costs salaried to hospitals, doctors, nursing homes, diagnostic laboratories, pharmacies, medical tool manufacturers and other machinery of the health care system, inspired 15.3 percent of the GDP of the United States, the biggest of any kingdom in the world. In 2001, for the OECD countries the average was 8.4 percent with the United States (13.9%), Switzerland (10.9%), and Germany (10.7%) creature the top three.

The healthcare trade includes the free of health services by doctors and more allied health providers. Generally such services take delivery of payment from the patient or from the patient's insurance company; even though they may be government-financed or delivered by charities or volunteers, chiefly in poorer countries.

A conventional vision is that improvements in health effect from advancements in medical science. The medical representation of health focuses on the eradication of sickness through diagnosis and effectual treatment.