OBJECTIVES: Côte d'Ivoire, a West African country, has decided to set up a formulary as part of its universal health insurance (UHI) program. One of its goals will be to facilitate access to safe and efficacious drugs. To guarantee transparency throughout the formulary listing process, it is important to select and value relevant decision criteria for that purpose. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate the preferences of healthcare professionals (physicians) when selecting reimbursable drugs and to analyze trade-offs between criteria for formulary listing in Côte d'Ivoire. METHODS: Choice sets based on four attributes (cost effectiveness of treatments, severity of the disease for which the treatments are indicated, age of the population affected by diseases considered, and social class affected by diseases considered [poor, rich]) were presented in a self-completion questionnaire. RESULTS: Analysis of questionnaire responses showed that ‘cost effectiveness’, ‘severity of disease’, and ‘social class’ were significant attributes in responder's preferences for reimbursable drugs. More specifically, respondents' choices were more sensitive to drugs that are very cost effective, that target very severe disease, and that target diseases in poor people. CONCLUSIONS: This explorative study enabled us to elicit the preferences of a sample of healthcare professionals (physicians) for reimbursed drug selection criteria in Côte d'Ivoire using the discrete-choice experiment method. Further work is required to achieve the ultimate objective of developing a formulary for Côte d'Ivoire.