Copyright ghanaguardian
Former Health Minister Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye has refuted claims by his successor, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, that the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) — Ghana’s digital health data platform — is foreign-owned and hosted abroad. Dr. Okoe Boye clarified that LHIMS is fully owned by a Ghanaian company and that all health data remains securely stored on servers located within the Ministry of Health in Accra, not in India as alleged. His response follows Minister Akandoh’s assertion during the Government Accountability Series that Lightwave had underperformed and deliberately disrupted the system in an attempt to blackmail the government. The minister revealed that a $100 million contract was signed in 2019 to link 950 health facilities, though fewer than half have been connected. The breakdown of the LHIMS platform has reportedly slowed health service delivery nationwide, particularly in the Ashanti Region, where hospitals have reverted to manual record-keeping. Dr. Okoe Boye, however, cautioned against replacing Lightwave with a new company behind the proposed Ghana Health Information Management System (GHIMS), warning that the new vendor is a long-time competitor of Lightwave. “It is frightening that the ministry appears to be engaging a rival company that has sought this contract for years, even though Lightwave’s project is near completion,” he said. He urged the government to act transparently and prioritize continuity in Ghana’s health digitization agenda rather than restarting contracts that could derail progress.
