Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has disclosed that project Lightwave, a government initiative to ensure an integrated database within the health sector, has gone live in 143 hospitals in the country.

According to him, during a meeting last week on the integration of databases with the Ghana Health Service, NHIA, NIA and the Project Lightwave team that works under the Ministry of Health and Minister Kwaku Agyeman Manu, he requested for an update on the implementation of the Lightwave project.

He indicated that the issue of lost folders and the inability of health personnel to find out the medical histories of patients will be a thing of the past, owing to the progress made by the Lightwave team.

Dr Bawumia revealed that the project is aimed at networking all hospitals, clinics and health centers across the country and all agencies under the Ministry of Health. This, he explained, includes the installation of an Electronic Medical Records System and a Patient Management System.

“The update provided indicates that project Lightwave team has so far onboarded and gone live in 143 hospitals (including all teaching and regional hospitals). This means that patients from these hospitals and clinics no longer need to physically look for and carry their folders when they attend hospitals.”
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia

Ridding healthcare system of manual database

The Vice President stated that patients of hospitals incorporated into the system will no longer have their medical records in manual folders but can move from department to department and hospital to hospital anywhere in Ghana without the need to physically carry their medical folders.

Dr Bawumia highlighted that government expect all hospitals in Ghana to be integrated by the end of 2024 or earlier. He further congratulated the Project Lightwave team and urged them to complete the exercise on schedule.

“As we continue to work on our economic challenges, we have to keep working on the digital transformational agenda Ghana has embarked on.”
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia

As part of efforts by government to ensure a digitized health sector, the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in July this year, launched the National Electronic Pharmacy Platform (NEPP).

The national ePharmacy, which is the first national-scale ePharmacy platform in Africa, is a digital convergence of licensed pharmacies across the country, which will enable Ghanaians to have access to prescribed medicines and buy by making an order with a mobile phone through the ePharmacy app, website or a shortcode and have the medicine delivered to a requested location.

Launching the NEEP, Vice President Bawumia, who challenged the Pharmacy Council to go digital in 2019 and supported the implementation of the NEPP through his office, expressed delight at the successful execution of the project and the immense benefits it will bring to Ghanaians in the delivery of healthcare.

The operationalization of the ePharmacy platform is such that every drug request entered into the system, is controlled by a team of professionals and registered pharmacists, who, based on the legality and availability of the drug, dispense the medication to the patient in a trust-worthy manner.

This, Dr. Bawumia noted, will not only make drugs easily accessible and promote competitive pricing, it will also help reduce the sale of illegal drugs.