NHIM driving innovations to improve health outcomes in Nigeria

The Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PHN) created and institutionalised the NHIM platform to identify, showcase, spur and support promising health innovations to tackle healthcare challenges and catalyse progress in improving health outcomes in Nigeria and beyond.

 “The marketplace explores and shapes alternative approaches to improving healthcare in Nigeria. As a result, innovations technologies and processes alike are birthed or made visible, piloted and ultimately supported with investments,” said Muntaqa Umar-Sadiq,CEO, PHN.

Nigeria Health Innovation Marketplace (NHIM) is a convergence platform for innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, healthcare practitioners/advocates, Non- Government Organisations (NGOs), development partners and all key actors in the healthcare value chain from conceptualizer to end user. The marketplace explores and shapes alternative approaches to improving healthcare in Nigeria.

Visit www.nhim,phn.ng to check how many innovations have been curated by the platform.

According to Umar-Sadiq, the Nigeria Service Delivery Innovation Challenge (NSDIC) was a competitive process to identify, showcase and select the most promising innovations in service delivery to improve the quality and coverage of Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal and Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) and nutrition interventions primarily in North-East Nigeria.

“The objective of the collaboration was to identify key innovations within Nigeria’s health service delivery ecosystem that could be included in the nation’s Global Financing Facility (GFF) investment case,” he added.

Hubs have emerged from various regions in the country. Although regulated health markets can yield creative innovations with the potential to significantly improve access, quality and efficiency of healthcare services, there has been minimal traction in harnessing innovations in health for the Nigerian health market.

Low application of innovation and technology in healthcare delivery, experts believe, is one of the most significant missed opportunities in transforming healthcare delivery in the country.  Unsurprisingly, none of the existing platforms currently focus on health innovation or the use of technological advances in healthcare delivery.

According to PHN, there is no end-to-end health innovation hub in Nigeria, either in the public or private sector, leading to the absence of platforms for identifying, shaping, coordinating and spurring health innovations in the country.

 Although promising health innovations exist in Nigeria, they tend not to attain scale or create sustainable impact due to inadequate support system for health innovators on issues such as lack of access to capital, business and financial management and essential business start-up support.

Added to this is minimal visibility by investors, on compelling viable health innovations and lack of convergence platforms that create necessary market and technical linkages.

The role that technology hubs (tech hubs) play in economic growth and development cannot be overemphasised. The revolution of tech hubs in Nigeria has been gradual, slightly picking up pace in the recent 2–4 years with hubs emerging in a few major cities mostly in Lagos, Abuja, and Kaduna.

Since the emergence of this hub in 2015, five innovations were declared winners at the NHIM’s inaugural Health Innovation Challenge (HIC). 

Furthermore, winners and other finalists of the 2015 Health Innovation Challenge (HIC) were enrolled in the NHIM’s Health Innovation Development Accelerator Program (HiDAP).  A bespoke 12-month non-residential program that combines real-world experience with established business principles, HIDAP strategically provides health innovators with the needed skills, support, and investment opportunities to build sustainable businesses that benefit Nigeria’s health sector.

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