In 2018, Ghana’s government signed a $100 million contract with an electronic medical records firm called Lightwave eHealthcare Solutions Limited.
In the contract, the firm was tasked with digitising paper medical records of patients across the country using their LHIMS platform.
However, the firm has reportedly shut off access to its healthcare platform for hospitals due to a dispute over renewal of its contract with the Ministry of Health.
The issue is sparking a conversation about the deeper danger of vendor lock-in in large public-sector IT contracts.
Contract in Limbo
For the last six years, Lightwave’s system, the LHIMS system, has been at the backbone of the government’s digital health ambition. The platform has reportedly processed more than 26 million patient encounters in public facilities nationwide.
The contract reportedly expired at the end of 2024 and has yet to be renewed with the new Mahama-led administration.
Despite this, Lightware continued to offer its services until a new deal was signed.
But last week, the company reportedly took its systems offline due to continued disputes. The downtime of the system has forced hospitals that rely on the service to switch back to manual record keeping.
As this publication, no formal renewal has been concluded.
Hospitals have been reverting back to manual records due to the digital system’s support and maintenance lag.
Ministry of Health Outlines The Issues
The Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, detailed in a recent parliament session the current impasse with Lightwave. He stated that the current contractual issue is due to a performance clause.
He stated that the company was supposed to connect 950 health facilities to its system. But at the end of 2024, the company had only connected 450.
“At the end of 2024, out of the 950 facilities, only 450 had been connected. Out of the $100 million, $77 million had been paid,” Mr. Akandoh told Parliament, detailing the contract terms.
The Minister stated that his Ministry is currently trying to resolve the contract dispute.
He also stated that the government would roll out a new government-managed system, GHIMS, to serve as the main platform for patient registration, clinical documentation, and other healthcare-related issues.
Vendor Lock-in Risk
The current predicament has outlined how procurement and vendor relationships in public digital infrastructure can create dependencies that are hard to unwind.
Due to the fact that LHIMS has been rolled out nationwide, virtually every public facility is dependent on it—and switching to another system (or running dual systems) would be highly disruptive.
Secondly, the lack of a contract renewal leaves the government in a weak negotiating position: the vendor knows there is high switching cost and institutional inertia, giving disproportionate leverage.
Consequences Already Showing
The risks and consequences of relying on one vendor are starting to actively manifest.
Public hospitals in the Ashanti Region and elsewhere are experiencing delays, longer patient wait times, and reverting to paper records.
Lightwave says it has been operating without formal financial support from the ministry for months. In August 2025, it formally notified the ministry that the arrangement was unsustainable.
The Ministry had dismissed fears of imminent suspension, but the communications lag and uncertainty are undermining confidence.
Ghana’s Digital-Health Future
If Ghana is to recover from this moment and move toward a sustainable, flexible digital-health ecosystem, several lessons emerge:
A transition strategy is needed: If the government wants to move away from the current vendor (or introduce alternative platforms), that cannot happen overnight. It requires phased migration, data portability, interoperability standards, and contingency planning.
Contract design matters: Future procurement needs to include exit clauses, vendor-change mechanisms, obligations around data-handover, and avoidance of lock-in.
Governance and oversight must be strengthened: Ensuring that bodies like the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) are central in overseeing national platforms can help avoid unilateral vendor dominance.
Competition and local ecosystem development should be nurtured: A government reliant on one large vendor limits local innovation, alternative solutions, and pricing leverage — this may stifle the growth of Ghana’s health‐tech sector.
Ghana’s digital health ambitions are laudable.
But in the contract dispute case between LHIMS and the government, it underscores how vendor lock-in in public IT systems can lead to systemic fragility. It can also weaken bargaining power for the state and ultimately, real-world consequences for patient care.
