By Klenam Fiadzoe 

The recent suspension of the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) and the launch of the Ghana Health Information Management System (GHIMS) has been rightly hailed as a victory for national control and accountability. While this strategic move is expected to effectively address waste and firmly establish Ghana on the path toward data sovereignty, this crucial transition must also prompt deep introspection and decisive action regarding the future management and infrastructure of our healthcare data.

The history of the LHIMS has been marred by significant issues, including serious allegations of corruption, poor value for money, and the unacceptable incident of national health data being held for ransom by a foreign private entity. These failures serve as the clearest possible evidence that Ghana’s health data infrastructure is in urgent need of modern, unbiased reforms. The path forward must prioritize fundamental changes in project design and implementation, specifically focusing on achieving long-term stability and sustainability in the management of our nation’s critical health data assets.

The catastrophic, immediate, and long-term effects of data blackmail incidents further erode public confidence in sharing critical health data due to privacy and security concerns. This justifiable fear leads to continued reliance on manual records and sustained resistance to digital platform adoption, fundamentally undermining the purpose of any Health Information Management System.

In a health setting, repeated service disruptions, data losses and blackouts as was characterized by LHIMS meant facilities had no access to patient histories, prescriptions, or allergies, making delays in treatment, misdiagnosis, and potentially preventable deaths a real threat.

Without reliable, continuous access to aggregated, real-time health data, Regulators operate blind, rendering the planning for disease outbreaks, resource allocation (like vaccines), and effective public health policy speculative and unreliable.

Readd the full article here: https://medium.com/@afrihealthtech/strengthening-health-data-sovereignty-governance-interoperability-to-improved-health-outcomes-9b78689c9107