Several public health facilities in the Ashanti region recently experienced a breakdown of the electronic health platform, the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS), thereby disrupting the delivery of medical services.

However, the Health Minister, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has disclosed that his outfit is putting in place measures to prevent a future recurrence. To avert such issues, the Minister noted that the ministry has launched the Ghana Healthcare Information Management System (GHIMS) to replace the current system, LHIMS.

During the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, October 29, the Health Minister said his ministry will use a four-week timeframe to restore full functionality to the country’s electronic healthcare management system across health facilities nationwide.

“The plan going forward is that in the next one week, we are going to begin with the teaching hospitals, the regional hospitals, and the highly populated district hospitals — to roll them over onto the system.

“In the second week, we’ll be looking at the rest of the district hospitals. And then in the third week, we’ll be looking at the clinics, the health centers, and the CHPS compounds.

“So, I am confidently announcing to the good people of this country that we have a four-week plan that will get us out of this mess,” Mr. Akandoh stated.

The LHIMS, which is a web-based software platform, has been designed to ensure faster healthcare delivery and improved administrative functions at the country’s medical facilities.

A few days ago, the LHIMS shutdown delayed medical care delivery in most facilities, putting patients’ lives at risk and placing extra pressure on doctors and nurses.

Due to the breakdown in the system, affected hospitals have turned to manual operations, causing prolonged waiting times at government medical facilities. Recently, individuals who visited the Ejisu Government Hospital for treatment were seen in long queues holding folders.

A patient said, “I came here around 7 a.m. and after waiting in long queues, I have now been served. If I knew this was the situation, I would have gone to a private facility.”

Healthcare officers were reportedly busily filling out documents by hand in exercise books. Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and Suntreso Government Hospital reported similar experiences.

But the Minister has blamed the vendor for deliberately causing the system to fail as a way to blackmail the government into removing key clauses from a new agreement. The details of the contract, according to the Minister, require the vendor to allow the state to manage, monitor, and make changes to the system without depending entirely on the vendor.

“To avoid this disruption and the shutdown we are experiencing, although we didn’t have any contract with the vendor at the time we took over, we indicated to them that the Ministry was ready to sign a service maintenance agreement covering the 450 health facilities.

“Don’t forget that the software is and was not for the state, that is why it is called LHIMS. In the agreement, we indicated that before we sign such an agreement with you, you have to hand over the data to the state and you must give us administrative access to the service. The vendor insisted that those clauses must be removed from the agreement,” the sector minister said.

He added that the government couldn’t exempt those clauses from the new agreement due to the need to ensure transparency and accountability to the public.

Mr Akandoh further noted that the government’s refusal to remove the clauses prompted the vendor to intentionally disrupt the system.

“We cannot expunge those clauses from the agreement because it is the state that must take charge of this data. So the vendor decided to switch the system off as and when he desired, and demanded what he wanted. This has gone on for more than two months, and for the past two weeks or so, the system has been completely down. If this is not blackmail, I don’t know what it is,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the Project Manager of LHIMS has attributed the disruption to unresolved administrative and contractual issues. Speaking to the media on Monday, October 27, he indicated that the contract had ended and had not yet been renewed.

According to him, in 2024, the Akufo-Addo government wanted the system to be integrated with the Birth and Death Registry. However, the integration could not be completed because the government was close to handing over to the current administration.

He added that the company later requested an extension to complete the integration from the current government, but the Health Ministry has yet to respond to their request.

“We wrote for an extension which didn’t materialise … we didn’t hear anything until a new government came into office.

“We made efforts to engage the Minister of Health or the ministry … because it’s been close to six months and nobody has called to get to know anything about the system” — a project he described as “one of the novel systems that the ministry is running.”