NHS England is set to hand over a key role in handling patient data to a US spy technology firm.
On Tuesday, the NHS will announce that Palantir’s £480 million bid with professional services company Accenture to operate the NHS’s new “federated data platform” (FDP) has been successful, according to The Guardian.
The five to seven-year IT contract is the biggest the NHS has ever awarded, and will likely start a debate about patient privacy.
The platform is designed to help individual hospital trusts and NHS integrated care systems – regional groupings of trusts – share information and “talk” to each other more easily.
NHS bosses insist that the FDP – which is supposed to help NHS entities share information amongst each other more easily – will improve care and will prevent patients from having to explain what’s wrong with them to multiple different staff.
Palantir – which has built software to support drone strikes and immigration raids – has a close relationship with the CIA, which led to David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, telling MPs in the House of Commons that “it is the wrong company to put in charge of our precious data resource”.
The company’s founder, Peter Thiel, was also condemned after saying British people’s affection for the NHS was “Stockholm syndrome”. On a separate occasion, he advocated for “[ripping] the whole thing from the ground and starting over".
