Background: Iran has made significant development in health and its scientific productivity, but a cohesive approach through a long-term plan is required to utilize knowledge for the country's health and development of health science and technology. As a part of a national agenda for development of "Comprehensive Scientific Map of the Country", the draft of the plan in the health-sector has been prepared.
Methods: A combination of two normative and exploratory approaches has been adopted to prepare the plan. For each part of the plan, a project defined. The group-projects developed their parts and consequently the draft of the plan developed. In the normative approach, the Islamic-Iranian values besides the country's vision for the year 2025 were assumed. National Innovation System concept used to analyze the related environment. Expert panels, using foresight methods, mainly pre­pared the information required for developing the plan. To finalize the plan, the draft was disseminated and receiving feed­backs, the document was polished appropriately.
Results: The long-term plan in the health sector has been prepared with the participation of around three-hundred experts. This plan includes vision, goals, monitoring and evaluation indicators, priorities, scenarios, policies, strategies, and requi­sites.
Conclusion: The main challenges were as follows: considering equity in health, balance in choosing priorities (primordial and primary prevention against advanced technologies), and the role of the government in knowledge management.