Tag Archives: palantir

Most of us by now will have heard of the tech giant Palantir, and its deal with the NHS to build a federated data platform.

Putting to one side the influences of Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Peter Mandelson in dodgy looking tech deals, revolving doors and high-pressure lobbying, the more we look into it, the more questions the NHS Palantir deal raises.  

My team and I have been investigating and asking questions in Parliament.  Last week I, (Martin) secured a Westminster Hall debate on the Palantir issue, and I made the case that Palantir’s implementation of the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) has the wrong contract, the wrong solution and the wrong supplier.

I’m sure most of us at some point in our lives have looked online to try and find a program we need, only to find out to our frustration that you cannot buy it outright and must instead pay a hefty subscription cost. Now, imagine the same thing but instead of paying £50 a year you are paying over £330M that gives you no software, no improvements and no intellectual property at the end of the contract.  That’s what the last government set up. 

But let’s look past the outrageous terms and look at what the supplier has provided for the NHS in past contracts. With such a high price tag it must have excelled at previous tasks, right?

Well, sadly not.  In Autumn 2020, Palantir won a £20 million contract for a border-flow system.  After a year or two this was cancelled as it had no users and no useful function.

And then, despite having no prior expertise in health they were given a contract to help manage the data from the COVID vaccination program.   Although that contract was a loss-leader, given for free…

After that, with influence from the NHS data team, Palantir won the 3-year contract in November 2023 for a Federated Data Platform.  Intended to deliver AI insights into the NHS, this was to connect all 200-odd hospital trusts into a data warehouse and analysis tool.

This subscription service was meant to deliver 13 core capabilities. According to the national audit office and the supplier themselves, after three years they have partially delivered three or four of them.

When they appeared last year in front of the select committee that I sit on (Science, Innovation and Technology), the only improvement Palantir and the NHS team could name was an improvement in managing staff rotas to deliver a higher throughput for operating theatres. 

Now I know this has been an issue for many years in the NHS, but technology has improved vastly, and today even relatively simple apps can do the logistics to rota staff.

Also, I do wonder whether this may be down to Government improvements in staffing and pay rather than the magic of Palantir. 

In what world is this contract a good deal for the NHS?

Maybe it’s not a good deal, but at least the software will be beneficial to patients and improve treatment, right?

Well, there has been many attempts within the NHS to unify its systems through a single IT system. They have all failed bar some improvements towards it’s combined data dictionary. You would therefore expect Trusts and ICB’s to jump at the opportunity for Palantir’s FDP, but after three years we have about half of the trusts stating they are live on the FDP, with just a quarter reporting benefit.