Hospitals left frustrated following Lightwave impasse

Ghana’s health sector is grappling with widespread disruption following the suspension of the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS), the electronic medical records platform that has served as the backbone of digital operations in dozens of hospitals for years.

The move—implemented even as its intended replacement remains incomplete—has triggered deep frustration among health workers and patients, and raised concerns about the country’s digital health readiness.

Across major health facilities from Accra to Tamale, the fallout has been swift and severe. Long queues have become the norm. Nurses are back to juggling bulky paper folders. Doctors struggle to retrieve patient histories. And patients who had grown accustomed to the efficiency of LHIMS now find themselves enduring slower and more chaotic service.

For nearly a decade, LHIMS provided a stable electronic environment for recording patient data, supporting clinical decisions, and coordinating care across departments. Though not without its flaws, it earned the confidence of health workers for its reliability and ease of use.

The sudden order to halt its use has thrown hospitals into turmoil.

“The new system simply isn’t ready,” an administrator at a major Accra hospital lamented. “We’ve been forced back onto manual processes, and patient care is suffering.”

Staff across the country echo the sentiment. Many say they received no proper briefing or training on the transition. Others describe the new digital platform as unstable, incomplete, or entirely inaccessible during critical working hours.

“We spend more time hunting for folders and rewriting notes than actually attending to patients,” a nurse at a teaching hospital said. “It feels like the clock has been turned back a decade.”

The impact on patients is immediate. Consultations that once took under an hour now stretch into several. Some facilities have reduced the number of patients they can see daily.

“I got here at dawn and left close to midday,” said Adwoa Owusu after visiting a hospital in the Eastern Region.

The backlog has also led to errors in documentation, misplaced lab results, and delays in retrieving patients’ previous medical histories — issues experts say could lead to serious clinical consequences.

“Inconsistent records increase the risk of treatment mistakes and unnecessary repeat tests,” a public health specialist warned.

The Ministry of Health and its partner agencies have launched a national digital harmonization initiative meant to unify various health information systems under one modern platform. However, insiders at several facilities say the rollout has been rushed, poorly communicated, and inadequately resourced.

“You don’t shut down a functional system before ensuring the replacement works,” said a medical director in the Northern Region. “This transition has created needless chaos.”

Digital health observers also question the financial and operational wisdom of disabling LHIMS before the new system is ready, calling the move disruptive and wasteful.

Amid the growing dissatisfaction, health workers, administrators, and patient advocacy groups are urging the Ministry to restore LHIMS temporarily while the new system is refined.

“We all support digital advancement,” said a senior clinician. “But the transition must protect patients, not inconvenience them.”

Some health unions are preparing petitions demanding clear timelines, transparent communication, proper training, and assurances that patient data will be safely migrated.

Ghana’s goal of building a unified digital health ecosystem remains widely supported. But the current confusion has exposed significant gaps in planning, coordination, and change management.

For now, hospitals across the country continue operating in a hybrid limbo—partly paper-based, partly dependent on an unfinished digital platform—hoping relief arrives soon.

For more than a decade, LHIMS has supported electronic medical records across facilities in the Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Savannah, and North East Regions, as well as selected hospitals in other parts of the country. Developed locally, the platform gradually expanded to include registration, consultation notes, lab reporting, pharmacy dispensing, billing, and data analytics.

Despite challenges such as intermittent internet and occasional system downtime, LHIMS earned a reputation for stability and usability among frontline health workers.

As Ghana intensified efforts to modernize and integrate its digital health infrastructure—including connecting systems to the NHIA and national ID databases—the Ministry began developing a new, unified digital platform. The new system is intended to eventually replace LHIMS and several other legacy tools.

However, before the new platform became fully operational, hospitals were instructed to suspend LHIMS entirely or disable significant parts of it. With the replacement still under configuration and testing, many facilities were left without a functional digital records system.

Health workers and digital experts argue that such transitions require phased rollouts, parallel testing, adequate training, and robust data migration frameworks — steps they say were not followed.

Until LHIMS is reinstated or the new system becomes fully functional, hospitals remain caught between an inactive old system and a not-yet-ready replacement, leaving the nation’s digital health agenda in a precarious holding pattern.