Data analysis company Palantir has access to health data from all hospitals in England, and this access could be even broader in the near future. The National Health Service England (NHS or NHSE) is increasingly working with the controversial company. Palantir operates in areas critical to the functioning of society and where sometimes highly sensitive information plays a role – in both the public and private sectors. With its software, the company wants to be the one central platform that can be used to integrate, analyze, and operationalize data from a wide variety of sources and in a wide variety of states.
Palantir services and software products are used in government and private sectors, including critical structures such as security and defense (intelligence, police and military), energy, transport, telecommunications, and finance. Palantir makes offerings in Federal Health, Health & Life Sciences, and Hospital Operations. The Palantir software “Foundry” is already being used in the “entire value chain of healthcare and life sciences” – from basic research to translational research, from drug discovery and development to manufacturing, marketing and sales.
Health data is highly sensitive personal data whose value should not be underestimated. With just over 56 million inhabitants, England is one of the most populous areas in Europe. And NHS England basically has (health) data on pretty much every resident because it’s the National Health Service.
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Palantir offered the US and various European countries (UK, Germany, France, Greece, Austria and Switzerland) offers its software foundry as a data management platform for fighting the pandemic. In Germany, for example, the state of Hesse briefly considered the offer but ultimately did not take advantage of it. In the spring of 2020, the British government finally awarded data exchange contracts to several companies for setting up and operating a “Covid-19 Data Store”: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Faculty, and Palantir.
The collected patient data includes the patient’s NHS number, date of birth, postcode of the usual home address, or whereabouts, and admission, inpatient stay, and discharge from hospital, as well as outpatient appointments and visits. The data should be used to identify and solve problems such as longer waiting times for admission or delays in the discharge of patients from the hospital. The data would also be used to measure and analyze performance across NHS England.
A tender process for the “NHS Federated Data Platform and Associated Services” (FDP) has been running since January 10, 2023. With the help of this “federated” platform, data exchange between the platforms of each hospital and each integrated care system should be possible. The NHS FDP’s aim is to “unleash the power of NHS data to understand patterns, solve problems, plan services for local communities and ultimately transform the health and care of the people they serve.”
Palantir says it is building “long-term partnerships” and wants to help its customers “recognize the value of their data and transform the way they work.” The company has been investing for years to gain permanent access to the UK healthcare system. This commitment has long been questioned by various media, including the Financial Times. There is also resistance from various organizations like “No Palantir,” which is petitioning for the end of Palantir in the NHS.
