Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, Minister for Health
Industry experts are expressing shock over what appears to be an effort to sideline Lightwave E-Healthcare Solutions Limited, the wholly Ghanaian-owned technology company that designed and built the country’s national electronic medical records system, the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS).
The company, which has spent nearly a decade building the digital backbone of Ghana’s healthcare delivery, has come under public scrutiny following statements by the Minister of Health suggesting that the system’s data is being “managed from India” and that Lightwave had been “overpaid for incomplete work.”
But insiders familiar with the project say those claims are inaccurate and risk undermining one of Ghana’s few examples of homegrown technological achievement.
“It’s baffling,” said one ICT policy analyst who has followed the project since its inception.
“Here is a Ghanaian company that built something world-class, employs over 150 Ghanaians, and has connected hundreds of hospitals across the country — and instead of celebrating it, we’re trying to discredit it.”
Lightwave E-Healthcare Solutions Limited was incorporated in 2015 with a vision to build an electronic health network powered entirely by local expertise.
In 2016, it launched a successful pilot in the Central Region under President John Dramani Mahama, which led to a nationwide rollout contract signed in 2019 under the current administration.
The US$100 million project aimed to digitise medical records in 950 health facilities. By the time the contract expired in December 2024, Lightwave had successfully deployed LHIMS in every teaching, regional, and district hospital — 253 major sites representing more than 70% of the project’s total value.
“The idea that this system was built abroad is false,” said a Lightwave official.
“All patient data sits in the Ministry of Health’s data centre in Accra, and we built and maintain the software right here in Ghana.”
Lightwave attributes project delays to late payments, slow government approvals, and the COVID-19 pandemic, but insists that it met every milestone approved by the Ministry.
The company says it has not been paid for eight months of post-contract service in 2025, and is still owed US$25 million for additional integrations — linking LHIMS with the NHIA, banks, and the Births and Deaths Registry.
Despite this, the company continues to operate the system in over 200 hospitals, including Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, Effia Nkwanta, and Eastern Regional Hospital.
Digital governance experts warn that sidelining Lightwave could discourage Ghanaian innovators.
“If a company can invest years of its life building national infrastructure and still be treated like an outsider, what message does that send to the next generation of local tech entrepreneurs?” one industry observer asked.
As the public debate continues, many in the technology and health sectors are urging the government to protect what they describe as a “national asset built by Ghanaians for Ghanaians.”
“LHIMS is Ghana’s digital health success story,” another expert added. “It would be tragic if politics or misinformation stripped ownership away from the people who created it.”