Palantir bags £330M NHS data bonanza despite privacy fears

Palantir has secured a £330 million ($412 million) contract to provide the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), which the world's largest healthcare provider says is vital to recover from its pandemic backlog. After a delay of more than eight weeks, NHS England said the data analytics technology from Palantir would support the …

[Pascal Monett]

"despite privacy fears"

Okay, can we just accept that UK government doesn't give a shit about its citizens and move on from there ?

It's not like any reasonable argument has deterred them from going in the wrong direction before.

[wolfetone]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

"Okay, can we just accept that UK government doesn't give a shit about its citizens and move on from there ?"

That's the unfortunate truth.

What's also the inconvenient truth is that the opposition are likely to be no better in this regard. So we have no hope at all on the matter.

[BebopWeBop]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

I live in hope. It remains to be seen if that is an inconvenient truth.

[wolfetone]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

Given that Sir Beer Korma has received donations from private health care companies, unless there is a seismic shift in what we're likely to be getting next year, then it's very much a case of "here's the new boss, same as the old boss".

[42656e4d203239]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

Every day Sir Beer's "Pink Tory" or "Tory Lite" sorbriquets appear more apt.... Dear USA, how are we doing at emulating your two party system?

[NeilPost]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

Tired pejorative and wilfully inaccurate tropes.

Esp. as no case to answer was found by the Police over Kier Starmer and Covid breaches… unlike the Tory Government, inc former and current Prime Ministers.

[wolfetone]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

What are you blithering on about?

"Nu" Labour are on record as saying that they will rely on the private health care services in the UK to "Help" the NHS, ignoring of course "New" Labour were the ones who started the sell off.

What's more, it's on record that Starmer has received financial backing from John Armitage who's hedge fund is heavily involved in private healthcare. There are others on the front benches of this current Tory-lite Labour party who have received donations from similar people with similar interests.

I could not, the same as everyone else, give a rats fart about Starmer and COVID breaches. I'll call him Sir Beer Korma because it's about the most interesting thing about the walking wax work, unless of course I call him Sir Kid Starver over his comments over children going hungry in this country.

What we're interested in is the morals of this man and what he's doing to a party that was set up for the interests of workers in this country. Selling off the NHS, incorporating more private healthcare in to it leading to more money being syphoned off from the state in to the pockets of private individuals matters, and this charlatan and the rest of his gang are relying on two things to avert peoples eyes from this:

1) We're Labour we invented the NHS

2) We're less shit than the Tories.

[The man with a spanner]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

Who?

[Jedit]

"It remains to be seen if that is an inconvenient truth."

Shadow Health Secretary Wes "McShitter" Streeting has stated outright that he welcomes private health care in the NHS.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/08/people-in-pain-private-hospitals-nhs

By a strange coincidence, McShitter has also received more than £140,000 in donations from private health care providers - making it his primary source of income over and above his MP's salary.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/06/labours-love-affair-with-private-healthcare#:~:text=In%20January%202022%20and%20April,UnitedHealth%2C%20America%27s%20largest%20health%20insurer.

Starmerite Labour's position on practically every Tory policy of the last year has taken the form "These policies are harmful. We will not reverse them when we are in government. In fact, we don't think they go far enough."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

While I share your concerns, not changing the dirty laundry guarantees no improvement.

That and the new found levels of political incompetence demonstrated by obsession with Brexit, Badenoch, Braverman and a bunch of other cunts on the take could not be more in plain sight if you tried.

[Roj Blake]

Re: "despite privacy fears"

I think the Covid Inquiry has pretty much confirmed that.

[BebopWeBop]

Follow the money

The winning bid was supported by consultancies Accenture and PwC

That will go well then (for the NHS (England) and the tax payer).

[s. pam]

Re: Follow the money

But wait, where's the mountains of cash for Crapita to screw up the system admin of said system???

[nichomach]

Re: Follow the money

They're probably queued up for the remedial works when it all goes titsup.

[Julian 8]

Re: Follow the money

more surprised there is no mention of infosys

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Follow the money

Accenture already run tons of stuff in the NHS - inc the NHS.NET M365 platform.

Despite this, I can’t send my GP a mail. Even one from the NHS.NET platform. E-mail is insecure they keep bleating. ‘Write us a letter or drop in !?’

[Julian 8]

Re: Follow the money

my local ones use "dotpost" for all communications now. Not even a version for phones / tablets - oh, no logon to a crap website

[Vikingforties]

Quote inversion

Should we invert the famous quote about Americans occasionally attributed to Churchill.....

"The UK Govt / NHS governance can always be relied upon to do the wrong thing, after investigating all the right possibilities."

[Tubz]

NHS England said the contract would last seven years and cost £330 million ... so in real money that will be £600m+, delivered late and Palantir and friends will get as much data as they can swallow, legally or not !

[Roj Blake]

About this no data sharing without explicit permission thing

Palantir: "Can we have the data, please?"

NHS: "Sure, here you go."

[42656e4d203239]

Re: About this no data sharing without explicit permission thing

>>Palantir: "Can we have the data, please?"

I fear you are being optimistic about Palantir actually asking....

[Julian 8]

Re: About this no data sharing without explicit permission thing

Isn't it an American motto "Its easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission"

[Dr Who]

Already done.

Home grown, open source, privacy driven, fraction of the cost but without the massive lobbying budget and capability.

https://www.opensafely.org/

[s. pam]

WTF is this needed?

3 of the 5 biggest NHS trusts already use Alfresco's Content product which if they've upgraded they can add Elasticsearch or OpenSearch, hence there's no need to throw ££'s to the 'Mericans!

[Roj Blake]

Re: WTF is this needed?

But how else will Rishi get his dream job working for Palantir in 2025 if he doesn't throw some business their way?

[abend0c4]

Vital to recover from its pandemic backlog

The pandemic backlog is mostly routine elective surgery. The capacity constraints are staff and facilities, not data.

[Catkin]

Re: Vital to recover from its pandemic backlog

I think 'routine elective' can be a tad misleading. For example, someone who suffers from debilitating but non-progressive back pain might have a spinal fusion operation described as routine and elective. However, they'd still likely react rather poorly if you suggested they could do with waiting a little longer.

[cantankerous swineherd]

NHS England said no company involved in the FDP would be able to access health and care data without the explicit permission of the NHS. All data within the platform is under the control of the NHS and will only be used for direct care and planning.

It will not be used to access data for research purposes and GP data will not feed into the national version of the software platform.

- this is a pack of lies only a child would believe.

There are no plans to flow this data nationally

- we haven't got round to planning this yet and we don't want a fuss about it, but that's what we'll do.

[JessicaRabbit]

I opted out of the data sharing yesterday as a result of this and I urge anyone else reading this to do so themselves if they haven't already.

[Dr Paul Taylor]

opt out?

What did you do to opt out? The news articles say that it's not possible.

The last two or three times when they "asked nicely" if they could appropriate all our medical data, we said no. So this time they're just going to take it, without asking.

[JessicaRabbit]

Re: opt out?

I used the NHS app to opt out but see https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/manage-your-choice/

[Dr Paul Taylor]

Re: opt out?

That page says "Opt outs do not apply to the federated data platform", ie Palantir.

[andrewj]

"People want to understand the arrangements to ensure the NHS does not find itself locked into a relationship with any specific vendor."

No. People want to ensure that the NHS is not providing their health information to invasive data slurping operations without permission.

[Anonymous Coward]

Integrated Care Boards

So they have already started buying other stuff, and an opt into the FDP.

The shitshow of the chaotic dysfunctional operational organisational management structure of the NHS continues.

Trusts, ICB’s, DoH, NHS England, NHS Digital, UKHSA … etc

[Anonymous Coward]

What does FDP claim to actually do?

The problem with spending all this money - or committing to spend it - is that NO-ONE I've spoken to really knows what FDP will actually *do*, what value it will add - so of course this smacks of corruption. It's just a black box which exists at national and regional (ICS) levels. It would be excellent if NHSE - or Palantir! - could actually provide some specific claims of functionality and value. No "NHS Operating System" responses please, like we've had before - that's just nonsense!