Exploring The Experience Of A Knowledge-Based Organization In Developing Countries: A Case Study Of The Institute For Futures Studies In Health In Iran

The Institute for Futures Studies in Health (IFSH) is an Iran based organization specializing in playing a key role in foresight activities in Iran's health system. The experiences of IFSH were recently documented by a World Health Organization (WHO) representative. Drawing upon this, this report introduces the IFSH, its structure, objectives, and management system. IFSH has three main pillars to its work, the integration of science and practice, social responsibility, and intelligence through the use of future studies. The IFSH has developed a foresight portal-based framework that has seven main modules: 1. Terminology 2. Experience-based learning, 3. Environmental scanning, 4. Evidence-oriented decision making, 5. Harmonized health information system 6. Expert network These modules are activated for doing projects based on a variety of requirements. Overtime we have learned through our successes and failures. In summary this includes: Minimizing formal structures, taking a cross-disciplinary approach in resource management, being responsive to the real questions of the country, using futures thinking and the importance of having a win-win attitude. These are just some of the lessons that we thought are worth of sharing in this report.