Nearly 450 knowledge-based companies are active in the health sector, said Reza Malekzadeh, deputy for research and technology affairs at the Health Ministry. “A crucial area of focus for research and scientific activities for such companies is non-communicable diseases that have surged over the past decade,” ILNA reported his as saying. One of the most important achievements so far is being ranked 10th globally by the World Health Organization in terms of improving health indicators, he added. With development of knowledge-based companies, Iran surpassed Turkey and claimed the top regional place in scientific production in 2011. In 2014, Scopus – the largest bibliographic database of abstracts and citations for academic journal articles – ranked Iran as the 16th globally in production of scientific articles.
