Regardless of rising considerations about Palantir’s involvement within the NHS, the corporate appears to be like to stay the front-runner in the important thing NHS England knowledge procurement, as it’s now embedded in associated tasks.
The FT lately reported that the NHS might break up the £360m Federated Information Platform (FDP) contract into a number of elements however prompt the controversial knowledge analytics agency Palantir nonetheless remained in ballot place to be the important thing bidder.
The contract for a centralised knowledge analytics platform, which has been fancifully described by NHS England as a future ‘working system for the well being service’, is primarily an information analytics platform used to analyse completely different streams of knowledge. The FDP just isn’t supposed to immediately assist sufferers’ care.
Palantir’s Foundry platform stays extremely favoured by NHS England. NHS belief sources have informed Digital Well being Information that also they are being strongly inspired by NHS England officers to undertake Palantir’s Foundry knowledge platform for different tasks forward of the nationwide FDP procurement.
One native chief stated: “I want they’d cease telling us to take Foundry simply because it’s their newest flavour of the month.”
Palantir is already concerned in one other linked NHS initiative, Quicker Information Circulate, an NHS pilot to add affected person knowledge, which is now the topic of a authorized menace from marketing campaign teams who declare it seems to disregard knowledge safety and procurement legal guidelines.
According to the Register, the Quicker Information Circulate pilot is about to “accumulate affected person degree identifiable knowledge pertaining to admission, inpatient, discharge and outpatient exercise from acute care settings every day” with out consulting sufferers or giving them the selection of opting out.
One other NHS supply stated, “The same old guidelines on affected person knowledge, consent and governance appear to stop to use when large US tech corporations like Google Well being or Palantir rock up and make large guarantees, senior NHS leaders appear to lose their essential colleges.”
NHS England officers declare the longer term FDP will convey collectively a variety of knowledge sources to offer NHS managers and senior civil servants with the perception to make higher choices.
The centralising transfer comes when the 42 native Built-in Care Methods (ICSs) are supposed to be driving native well being coverage and choices.
Based on NHS England the FDP will observe inhabitants well being and ‘individual perception’, care coordination, elective restoration, vaccines, and provide chains.
Palantir have been in ballot place for the FDP procurement since initially providing its providers for ‘free’ to NHS policymakers throughout the pandemic, offering knowledge analytics to assist plan and reply to the Covid-19 pandemic, in areas resembling PPE and vaccines.
In doing so that they managed to persuade coverage leaders at NHS England that they wanted a panopticon-like view of NHS exercise. Palantir then gained a £1m contract extension adopted by a £23m, two-year deal in December 2020.
They’ve additionally been influential in shaping the £360m procurement they’re now bidding to win. A contract that has already ballooned from an initial estimated value of £240m. Some estimates counsel the deal may very well be value £1 billion over ten years.
This compares to an estimated £1.8 billion of nationwide funding on supplier digitisation over the subsequent 4 years. That’s funding in these methods that immediately assist affected person care.
With such restricted funding out there for digital initiatives, critics say the FDP dangers absorbing funding that’s critically wanted within the estimated 25% of NHS trusts that also lack fundamental digital affected person data (EPRs).
It additionally partly duplicates knowledge capabilities already developed by NHS Digital, the arms-length that NHS England is at the moment taking on.
Because it ramps as much as attempt to win the profitable FDP contract, Palantir has employed senior digital leaders from NHSX, the previous digital arm of NHS England, together with Indra Joshi, former head of the NHS AI Lab.
It has additionally employed Harjeet Dhaliwal, former deputy to Ming Tang, NHS England’s knowledge chief, who’s answerable for the FDP contract and for Palantir’s earlier contracts with the NHS. Dr Justin Whatling, a former senior Cerner govt, has additionally been recruited as its UK MD.
The claims made for the FDP sound perilously near magical considering: a treatment to all of the ills for the NHS.
An data pack supplied to suppliers was effusive in regards to the present Foundry platform equipped by Palantir, stating it’s “delivering big advantages and was essential to the success of the vaccination and PPE programmes”.
Rolling out this sort of system throughout the remainder of the well being service “has the potential to ship £3.6bn advantages over 10 years”, the doc claimed.
