Former Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, has dismissed claims made by his successor, Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, that the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS)—Ghana’s national digital health platform—is foreign-owned and operated.
According to Dr. Okoe Boye, Lightwave is a wholly Ghanaian company, and contrary to the Health Minister’s recent remarks, all national health data remains securely stored within the Ministry of Health, not in India as alleged.
Speaking during the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, October 29, Minister Akandoh accused Lightwave of poor performance and claimed the company had intentionally disrupted the system to pressure the government.
He explained that in 2019, Ghana signed a $100 million contract with Lightwave to digitally connect 950 health facilities nationwide through the LHIMS platform. Though the contract was originally expected to end in 2022, it was extended twice—first to 2023, and later to December 31, 2024—due to implementation delays.
The recent system outage has reportedly disrupted healthcare operations across several regions, especially in the Ashanti Region, forcing many hospitals to revert to manual patient record-keeping. Patients have since expressed frustration over long queues and delays in accessing care.
Minister Akandoh assured the public that steps were being taken to stabilize the health information network. He revealed that a new digital platform, known as the Ghana Healthcare Information Management System (GHIMS), had been secured to resolve the challenges and enhance the nation’s healthcare technology infrastructure.
However, in an interview on Eyewitness News, Dr. Okoe Boye warned that the new company managing GHIMS is actually a competitor to Lightwave, and urged caution before awarding it control over a project that is already near completion.
“The Minister has unilaterally gone to engage another vendor under the name Ghana Health Information Management System. What is concerning is that this vendor has been competing with Lightwave for nearly eight years and now seems to be taking over work that Lightwave was almost done with,” Dr. Okoe Boye emphasized.
He added that nearly half of Ghana’s hospitals have already been successfully integrated into the Lightwave system and warned that sudden transitions between platforms could undermine years of digital progress.
As the debate continues, the Ministry of Health faces increasing pressure to clarify the ownership, performance, and security of Ghana’s national health data systems.