Beyond a single system: Lessons from Ghana's discontinued national EHR and the imperative for an interoperable digital health ecosystem

Ghana's pursuit of a national electronic health record (EHR) system dates back over a decade before the introduction of the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS). In 2010, the Ministry of Health launched the National e-Health Strategy, which explicitly called for the application of information and communication technologies to improve health-system performance and service efficiency.1 The strategy identified the lack of interoperability, fragmented hospital data silos, and manual patient records as critical barriers. It therefore proposes a national e-health architecture grounded in shared standards and enhanced coordination between public and private providers. It also emphasised that early e-health initiatives were small, uncoordinated pilots and highlighted the need for a unified national platform for patient information.