Former Health Minister, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, has refuted claims by his successor, Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, that the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS)—the national platform managing health information—is foreign-owned.
According to Dr. Okoe Boye, the system is fully owned by a Ghanaian company, and contrary to Minister Mintah Akandoh’s assertions, Ghana’s health data is securely stored at the Ministry of Health, not in India.
Speaking at the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, October 29, Minister Mintah Akandoh accused Lightwave of underperformance and alleged that the vendor deliberately disrupted the system to blackmail the government.
He explained that in 2019, the government signed a $100 million contract with Lightwave to connect 950 health facilities nationwide through LHIMS. The contract was initially set to expire in 2022 but was extended twice, first to 2023 and later to December 31, 2024, due to delays in implementation.
The recent system breakdown has caused widespread delays in record-keeping and patient processing, particularly in the Ashanti Region, where many hospitals have reverted to manual operations. Patients have expressed frustration over long waiting times and slower service delivery.
Minister Mintah Akandoh assured the public that the government is committed to restoring and strengthening the nation’s digital health infrastructure. He revealed that a new platform, the Ghana Healthcare Information Management System (GHIMS), has been procured to address the challenges and ensure continuity of healthcare delivery.
However, speaking on Eyewitness News on Wednesday, Dr. Okoe Boye cautioned that the new company behind GHIMS is a direct competitor to Lightwave, which has been vying for the contract for years.
He warned the Health Minister to be cautious about awarding the contract to a new company when almost half of all hospitals have already been onboarded to the Lightwave platform.
“You have a situation where the government of Ghana, through the Minister of Health, is saying that they’ve done an audit… The minister has unilaterally gone to engage another vendor and is telling Ghanaians that the name of their new system is Ghana Health Information Management System.
“What makes it frightening is that, on the surface, you might think that this work is about to be done by Ghana or the state. It is actually a competitor of Lightwave, who has been looking for this job for the past eight years and has succeeded in entering the ministry to be doing a job that has been given to another entity, which is just about finishing.”
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