Ghana’s healthcare data system is undergoing a major overhaul as the Ministry of Health has introduced a new digital platform to replace the long-troubled Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS).
The move comes as Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh publicly accused the LHIMS contractor of underperformance and, pointedly, blackmail.
Speaking at the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, October 29, Mr. Mintah Akandoh announced the procurement of a new platform, the Ghana Health Information Management System (GHIMS).
According to him, this new system is central to a four-week plan aimed at resolving the widespread disruptions and delays that have plagued the electronic healthcare management system, forcing many hospitals to revert to manual operations.
Contract lapses and financial irregularities
The Minister attributed the system failure to the poor execution of the contract awarded to the company behind LHIMS. Mr. Akandoh explained that in 2019, the government signed a $100 million contract with Lightwave to connect 950 health facilities nationwide.
The contract was scheduled to expire in 2022 but was extended twice, ultimately to 31 December 2024, due to implementation delays.
“At the end of the expiration, out of the 950 facilities, only 450 had been connected,” Mr. Mintah Akandoh disclosed. He added that despite less than half the work being completed, over 70% of the total contract sum had already been paid.
“By December 2024, the vendor had been paid about $77 million out of the $100 million. Clearly, more than 70% of the total amount had been paid, yet less than 50% of the work was done.”
A subsequent forensic audit of the project uncovered severe financial and operational irregularities. Mr. Akandoh stated that the hardware supply had “gaps,” with shortfalls in quantity and substitution of specified equipment.
“If the contract stated that HP laptops should be supplied, cheaper brands were delivered. If it said 100 computers, fewer were supplied. The gap in hardware alone was not less than $18 million.”
Furthermore, the Minister raised serious concerns about national data sovereignty, noting that the system’s cloud infrastructure was hosted outside Ghana, specifically in India, limiting the state’s control and access to citizens’ medical records after the contract expired.
The four-week restoration plan
To swiftly mitigate the disruption, the Minister announced a phased migration to the new GHIMS platform over the next four weeks.
- Week One: Teaching hospitals, regional hospitals, and highly populated district hospitals will be rolled over onto the new system.
- Week Two: The rest of the district hospitals will be migrated.
- Week Three: Clinics, health centres, and CHPS compounds will be included.
Mr. Akandoh declared that the government is confident this plan will bring the country out of the “mess”. He strongly affirmed the commitment to digital health: “The medical records of Ghanaians would never go back to the manual way. We are moving forward — responsibly, confidently, and decisively”.
The Ministry pledged that future digital health projects will be executed with greater transparency, oversight, and accountability to prevent a recurrence of such failures.
