Palantir is an \u201cevil\u201d company whose involvement in the NHS is damaging patient trust in the service, senior health workers have told Novara Media.<\/p>\n
US spytech firm Palantir \u2013 which has provided military technology to Israel<\/a> during its ongoing genocide in Gaza and custom surveillance tools to ICE<\/a> in the US \u2013 currently holds a major patient data contract with NHS England.\u00a0<\/p>\n Palantir was contracted in 2023 to build and operate the federated data platform (FDP), which aims to pull together sensitive patient information from different sources into a single database.\u00a0<\/p>\n Palantir\u2019s products are commonly used by states in warfare, policing and mass surveillance, and the firm\u2019s chair and co-founder Peter Thiel has previously stated that the NHS \u201cmakes people sick\u201d<\/a> and that British people\u2019s affection for their health service is akin to \u201cStockholm Syndrome\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n NHS staff \u2013 both clinical and non-clinical \u2013 are increasingly raising concerns about such a company\u2019s involvement with Britain\u2019s health service and its access to sensitive patient data.\u00a0<\/p>\n NHS consultant Anna* told Novara Media: \u201cI don\u2019t think Palantir should have anything to do with the health service. I think the company is evil.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The cancer specialist said Palantir\u2019s involvement is harming patient trust in the NHS, and she\u2019s experienced patients \u201ccompletely unprompted\u201d asking her not to document something because they \u201cdidn\u2019t want that information to be visible to a foreign company that isn\u2019t based in the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re told it\u2019s all anonymised, and the data cannot be accessed,\u201d Anna said. But she raised doubts about the security of the data.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you open [the FDP\u2019s cancer tool],\u201d Anna said, \u201cit looks like a massive spreadsheet, basically, and there\u2019s hundreds of patients\u2019 details there. The rows are automatically populated with patients \u2013 people who somebody has identified need to be on a pathway for cancer \u2013 and it\u2019ll pull demographics like their date of birth, their age, the NHS number when the referral came in.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, the FT revealed that NHS England has granted staff from external companies including Palantir \u201cunlimited access\u201d<\/a> to identifiable patient data while working on an area of the FDP that\u2019s described as a national-level \u201csafe haven for data\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Remi*, a senior NHS England employee working in vaccinations and screening who exclusively uses FDP products in their job, told Novara Media that patients\u2019 vaccination data is meant to be anonymised. However, Remi said, the data is actually \u201cpseudonymised\u201d and it\u2019s not difficult to see how patients could be identified by anyone with local trust knowledge.<\/p>\n Remi said vaccinations data should be \u201ccompletely anonymous and non-identifiable\u201d to anybody in their position, as a staffer who compiles vaccinations numbers for trusts but does not deal with patients directly. But \u201cit\u2019s not\u201d, Remi said, explaining that they go to the trouble of filtering out some demographic indicators: \u201cPart of my day-to-day is actually going a bit further to omit some results, in terms of trying to adhere to information governance rules \u2013 but that shouldn\u2019t be something I have to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctors\u2019 union the BMA told Novara Media that it is \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d by reports of NHS England granting Palantir access to patient data, which would realise medical professionals\u2019 \u201cworst fears about scope creep and the erosion of patient trust\u201d. The BMA said: \u201cThis level of access by non-NHS employees threatens the very cornerstone of the doctor-patient relationship and risks deterring people from seeking vital care if they fear their data is in unsafe hands.\u201d<\/p>\n An NHS England spokesperson said \u201cstrict policies\u201d are in place for managing access to patient data and \u201cregular audits\u201d are carried out to ensure compliance. They added: \u201cAnyone external requiring access must have government security clearance and be approved by a member of NHS England staff at director level or above.\u201d<\/p>\n Even before the news that external contractors would be granted \u201cunlimited access\u201d to identifiable patient data broke, NHS England said access to patient data in the FDP \u201cmust have an explicit aim to benefit patients and\/or the NHS in England\u201d<\/a>, which didn\u2019t necessarily preclude Palantir staff or other government departments from being granted access. And according to healthcare workers\u2019 charity Medact, NHS provider trusts were receiving requests<\/a> from Palantir to access stored data on a local level that identifies patients multiple times in a working week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Data management and privacy concerns around Palantir\u2019s software processing and analysing confidential patient information have repeatedly been raised by patients\u2019 rights organisations<\/a>, human rights groups<\/a> and health workers\u2019 unions<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Locked in.<\/p>\n Originally valued at \u00a3330m, the full cost of Palantir\u2019s FDP to the NHS is now reportedly set to exceed \u00a31bn<\/a> over its first seven years. While the cost is high, there\u2019s a danger that the NHS could become trapped.\u00a0<\/p>\n Remi warned that there\u2019s a risk of the NHS becoming dependent on Palantir as a monopoly supplier \u2013 something known as \u2018vendor lock-in\u2019. \u201cI think it\u2019s by design and I actually find it sinister,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n Remi is not sold on Palantir\u2019s product from a technical point of view, saying they do not find it intuitive. \u201cIf I had to give it a score out of ten, I\u2019d give it a five,\u201d they said. But another concern is what happens if the NHS stops using it.<\/p>\n While Remi is clear that they support the ending of Palantir\u2019s involvement with the health service, they said: \u201cAll of the work we do is on the platform, it\u2019s not on files I can export or save. It\u2019s all external. If we lost the contract today, I don\u2019t see how we wouldn\u2019t absolutely lose the work. And I know this because with their initial version [the Covid database], all the work I had on there was gone.<\/p>\n \u201cIf their platform no longer exists, our reports and our dashboards would cease to function, because it\u2019s all done using their product.\u201d<\/p>\n Palantir got its foot in the door of the NHS with an initial pandemic deal \u2013 won with no competitive tendering process<\/a> \u2013 to collect and process confidential patient information in a Covid-19 data store for a reported cost of just \u00a31 for the first three months<\/a>. Palantir UK chief Louis Mosley, grandson of British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley, has described the firm\u2019s strategy as \u201cbuying our way in\u201d<\/a> and \u201choovering up\u201d small businesses working with the NHS to \u201ctake down a lot of political resistance\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mosley said in March that if Reform won the next general election with a \u201cclear public mandate\u201d to allow NHS data<\/a> to be used for immigration enforcement, then the company would execute the plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n Palantir\u2019s reputation and relationships have been aided by Global Counsel<\/a> \u2013 the lobbying firm set up by disgraced former US ambassador and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Mandelson<\/a> \u2013 and by intense lobbying efforts directed at ministers and NHS executives<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some NHS staff have been warned off criticising the FDP \u2013 run on Palantir\u2019s Foundry software (the civil equivalent of its military product, Gotham<\/a>) publicly, and even threatened with the loss of their jobs<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anna tried to raise ethical concerns about the FDP with the chair of a hospital committee, but said her questions have been \u201cignored\u201d and \u201cbrushed off\u201d. She was told \u201cmaybe you don\u2019t want to do that\u201d.<\/p>\n