Bawumia to launch Ghana’s E-Health, Africa's first electronic management system for patients

The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, will, on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, launch another landmark digital initiative in the health sector by the government, E-Health.

The Akufo-Addo government, with strong support of Vice President Bawumia, has already launched and operationalised the innovative drone medical delivery service, which delivers essential medical supplies in real time to remote parts of the country, as well as the E-pharmacy, a digital platform which allows Ghanaians to buy drugs from pharmacies online.

The launch of E-Health, which Dr. Bawumia has been hinting at for sometime now, will mark a significant transformation in Ghana's healthcare delivery across the country, from analogue to electronic, in terms of handling of patient's records.

The E-Health digital solution, the first of its kind in Africa, is being implemented by Lightwave e-Health Solutions, in partnership with the Ministry of Health.

The application is centered on the creation of a complete electronic medical record and patient management system, along with a unique integration of Ghana's Disease Surveillance Unit’s disease protocols into the digital application.

Under the E-Health, records of patients in all teaching, regional and district hospitals have been digitized, and all these hospitals have also been networked to ensure seamless access to a patient's record from one hospital to the other electronically.

What this also means is that, all patients being transferred from one hospital to the other, regardless of location or region, will no longer have to carry their files to the new hospital they are being transferred to, or visiting.

The E-Health adds to the huge transformation in Ghana's healthcare delivery system in the past seven years, following the allocation of ambulances to all constituencies, the establishment of the drone medical delivery service, which delivers thousands of emergency drugs to over 2000 hospitals nationwide, the easier access to drugs through the E-pharmacy and the expansion of public hospitals.

The deployment of this unique Health Information Management System also represents a watershed moment in Ghana’s healthcare history, as the system, both government and developers have said, will empower healthcare professionals with real-time access to comprehensive patient records, enabling informed decision-making and enhancing patient safety.

Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the man who has spearheaded this initiative, has been looking forward to its official launch with optimism, highlighting its expected impact of the service on Ghana's healthcare system.

“Going forward, medical records and the history of patients can be gathered under a single database, which can be accessed by any networked hospital when the patient visits. This digitization effort has increased efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity in service delivery in our health facilities. This is very, very major. What Ghana is doing, we would be the first country in Africa to do it. And in the world, there are only three countries that have done this network," Dr. Bawumia said a few months ago at a health programme in Tamale.