The Federal Government has adopted Health Technology Assessment as part of efforts to improve healthcare spending and ensure that limited resources are directed towards interventions that provide greater value to Nigerians.

The Director-General of the National Health Insurance Authority, Dr Kelechi Ohiri, disclosed this on Wednesday during the inauguration of the Health Technology Assessment Steering Committee and the official launch of HTA in Nigeria.

The event was formally inaugurated by the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Muhammad Ali Pate.

Ohiri, in a presentation titled “Progress of Health Technology Assessment Institutionalisation in Nigeria,” said the approach would strengthen evidence-based decisions on healthcare coverage, reimbursement, pricing and allocation of resources as Nigeria pursues Universal Health Coverage.

He explained that HTA provides a systematic and multidisciplinary method for assessing the clinical, economic and wider value of healthcare technologies.

According to him, the approach would help the NHIA make informed decisions on the design of benefit packages, coverage, reimbursement, adoption, pricing and resource allocation.

Ohiri said the institutionalisation of HTA was not being pursued as an isolated technical programme but as part of broader reforms aimed at strengthening the NHIA’s strategic purchasing function.

He said strategic purchasing required deliberate decisions on what healthcare services to purchase, who should receive them, from whom they should be obtained and at what price, based on available evidence.

The NHIA began strengthening its HTA capacity in 2025 through its strategic purchasing reforms, establishing a Strategic Purchasing Department and a dedicated HTA Division.

Since then, the authority has developed an HTA Framework, Reference Case, Process Guidelines, Deliberative Process, Committee Terms of Reference, Conflict of Interest Policy and Stakeholder Mapping and Analysis.

Ohiri said the documents provide the governance structure and operational guidelines needed to transform HTA from an emerging technical activity into a consistent institutional process.

The authority has also invested in developing local expertise, with two PhD students and two master’s students receiving postgraduate HTA training at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.