Medical entrepreneurship poses new problems for the profession, which dislikes regulation, and for the government, which likes to focus regulation on the public hospital environment and otherwise keep the doctor-patient relationship at arms length, under professional self-regulation. As a result, according to one member of a Food and Health Bureau working group panel set up to investigate medical regulation, there is nothing to define what procedures a doctor can perform outside a hospital.

It is a loophole that led to one women dying and three others suffering serious injuries following blood-transfusion therapy at a private beauty clinic in 2012. This put the focus on the blurred lines between health, beauty and medical treatments after years of warnings from doctors.

Now, the has learned, doctors are to be banned from carrying out high-risk medical procedures in beauty salons or other private premises without the approval of the Department of Health. New rules to be put forward by the working group will close a loophole allowing operations - even those involving the administration of a general anaesthetic - to be carried out anywhere.