Opportunities and Challenges of Knowledge Management in the Iranian Health Care System;Focusing on the Covid-19Epidemic

Nowadays, the basis of competition haschanged and the success of organizations dependson the degree of attention to knowledge. In this era,the mainadvantage islied within the knowledge properties of the organizations. Accordingly, the world's largest organizationshave earned their superiority by the processes accompanied with knowledge,nottheir financial assets.Theseorganizationshavedeveloped knowledge management systems, in orderto applyit,as best as they can.Knowledge managementincludes all the ways that organizationsmanagetheirknowledge assets, comprisingcollection,storage,transfer,applying,updating and creating knowledge. Due to some especial characteristics like wide range of employees, variation in services (which based on up-to-date sciences and experiences), wide geographical distribution in towns and villages, dealing with the public and community health,being rich in information, etc.;the health organizations are among the most important establishments whichrequire implementation of knowledge management.The Covid-19 pandemic has showed importance of the role of knowledge management in providing information to decision-makers in the proper time.Knowledge management inhealthcare has several purposes. This study tries to express the goals,applications and implementation of knowledge management in national health management system and evaluatethe challenges and opportunities ahead; especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.