When Ghana’s national Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) went dark in late 2024, the consequences were immediate and catastrophic. More than 14.2 million patient medical records—treatment plans, medication histories, diagnoses, lab results—became inaccessible overnight. Doctors and nurses across the country abandoned their computers and picked up exercise books. Long queues snaked through hospital corridors. Patients waited helplessly while clinicians, effectively blinded, treated them without knowing their allergies, their previous medications, or their medical history.

The system was supposed to replace the era of brown folders, missing files, and handwritten notes with efficiency, speed, and accuracy. Instead, it became the epicentre of a public health crisis unfolding quietly because of a contract dispute. At Kenya’s largest referral hospital, a botched transition to a new digital system left patients stranded in the emergency department for nearly two days and critical services paralysed.