In Iran, there are more than 85 pharmaceutical manufacturers; 20 active pharmaceutical ingredients manufacturers (API) and several knowledge-based, mostly biopharmaceutical, companies and the largest manufacturer has 11.5% of the market. There are 15 national and many regional wholesalers and more than 8000 retail pharmacies and some 800 hospital pharmacies are serving patients.  The pharmaceutical market is largely a generic market and domestic industry supplies have very low and fixed prices. There are trade barriers against importers (tariffs up to 65% for branded medicines which are also locally produced). The private sector has been growing, leading to potential legal and gray ports of branded drugs and risk of counterfeit/substandard drugs entering the market. The total pharmaceutical value currently exceeds 3.6 billion $US with an average annual growth of 20% during the past few years. Of all medicines in the Iranian pharmaceutical market and in terms of number/volume, about 96% are produced locally and less than 4% are imported. However, the value of imported medicines accounts for about 40% of the value of the whole market. The types of imported medicines are those of high technology and vital nature such as medications used in treatment of cancer, anesthetics, drugs used in emergency hypertension, heart failure and cardiac arrest, plasma derived anti coagulants used for hemophilic patients and antibiotics. The nature and trend of importation of such imported medicines have remained almost the same over the time.

Moreover, the market value of medical devices in Iran is about 1 billion U.S. Dollar annually for importation of Hi Tech medical devices such as CT scanners, MRIs, cardiac stents, pace makers and so on, mainly from Europe and the US. Some 25% of medical devices used in Iranian health system are also produced in the country.