Data firm Palantir has won a worth up to $415 million (£330 million) to build a platform for England’s public health system data, alongside consultants Accenture and other smaller firms.
The deal will see Palantir roll out a “Federated Data Platform” (FDP) that will combine health information from multiple data sources at both a local and national level.
The seven-year contract represents one the biggest data projects England’s National Health Service has invested in for years.
NHS England says it will “join up key information currently held in separate NHS systems” to “maximise resources” like operating theatre and outpatient clinic time, ensuring patients “receive more timely care.”
The NHS is battling growing elective waiting lists and severe pressures on its emergency services as demand for service exceeds capacity and hospitals struggle to discharge patients into adequate social care. Ongoing staff strikes and the Covid-19 pandemic have squeezed services enormously over the last few years.
Nonetheless, the FDP project has been controversial since its inception, in part because of Palantir’s background as a supplier for defence agencies including the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency.
In 2020, Slate.com named it the fourth “most evil” tech company, in part for its role helping the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency target deportations under the Trump administration.
Beyond Palantir’s reputation, concerns have been raised over the security of data that will be held in the platform, as well as how useful it actually is. The procurement process has also faced heavy scrutiny from industry experts.
Palantir’s history in the NHS
The firm, which saw out competition for England’s FDP from IBM and Cerner Oracle, has been hotly-tipped to win the contract from the start. It already provides a pilot version of the platform to dozens of hospital trusts.
During the pandemic, Palantir provided software to track supplies of personal protective equipment and various data related to Covid-19. Both projects were initially controversial, with concerns raised over the procurement processes and the effectiveness of the products.
Still, Palantir expanded its Covid-19 activities and became heavily involved in NHS work over the next few years. The FDP builds on the firm’s Covid-19 data store work, which used its “Foundry” solution.
Earlier this year it was awarded a $31 million (£25 million) “transition and exit” contract to prepare its Foundry services to be replaced by the upcoming FDP. The deal was not awarded through an open procedure, according to industry publication HSJ.
HSJ also revealed this week that several trusts using a pilot version of the platform hadn’t found it all that useful.
Concerns over data security — and confidence in that security — also remain. Some experts have queried why the platform would be led by a U.S. firm at all, given the country already has a U.K.-funded and operated federated data processing solution for research purposes.
“Doing it for patient services operationally is much easier,” University of Cambridge Marconi professor of communications systems Jon Crowcroft told the U.K.’s Science Media Center. “Why give money to a sketchy overseas outfit with known behaviour that is not aligned with NHS ethos?”
NHS England says data used in the platform won’t be accessible to any firm involved in the bid without explicit permission from the service, nor will it be used for research purposes.
But that hasn’t quelled campaigners, who are worried that so much sensitive data will be held in an infrastructure provided by the Palantir. In August, for example, legal firm Foxglove and others launched an emergency campaign to stop the FDP’s award to Palantir.
Experts have warned a lack of transparency could reduce public confidence in the project, undermining its potential benefits.
“There is a huge responsibility in stewarding and governing” the NHS’s enormous data assets, said Elena Simperl, professor of computer science at King’s College London. “Every failure to maintain and restore public trust could inevitably lead to more people opting out of secondary uses of the data.”
Data, she says, that’s extremely valuable “to improve how the NHS operates, to drive advances in scientific research, and to boost AI products and services.”
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