The publication of the contract notice was estimated to be announced on 6th June 2022. However, in knowledge of the evidence complexities associated with choosing a software vendor, this date is only an estimate. Thus far, the NHS has made NO official announcement regarding the official vendor.
The following article will go into detail regarding all that is currently know about the NHS deal.
Huge Contract:
US data analytics group Palantir is gearing up to become the underlying operating system for the UK’s National Health Service, poaching senior NHS officials as part of a bid to win a £360mn contract to manage the data of millions of patients across England.
Palantir recently hired AI Chief From U.K.’s NHS as the company tried to expand further. Indra Joshi quit as director of AI for NHSX in March, saying it was “time to take a break before moving on to my next challenge.” She has since lined up a job with the U.S. data technology company founded by Peter Thiel.
A Palantir spokesman said the company was “delighted that Indra has agreed to join the team, which we are aiming to grow by 250 in the U.K. this year.”
The company is expanding rapidly in Britain, where it currently employs 600 people and processes sensitive data for the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office. Under the NHS Covid-19 Data Store contract, it is helping to clear the backlog of patient cases that were left untreated because of the pandemic.
“Palantir has said this is a must-win deal for them,” said a person with knowledge of Palantir’s expansion plans in the UK. “This is a five-year contract, with an option for an extension for two years. [Many people] think it’s really £1bn over 10 years. Once Palantir is in, how are you going to remove them?”
According to several figures at the NHS and at its suppliers, Palantir is viewed as the frontrunner for the FDP contract, which runs until 2027. The platform will be used for the national management of vaccines and immunisation programmes, population health, elective waiting lists and medicines and equipment supply chains, among other applications.
NHS England has announced plans to develop a £240 million ‘Federated Data Platform’ (FDP) via a prior information notice ahead of an open procurement.
One senior NHS official said Palantir was well-placed to win the bid, particularly when its work was assessed against failures elsewhere in the Covid response, notably deficiencies in the programme to test and track contacts of infected people. “If you were to compare the [successful] work that Palantir did in vaccines and PPE, with the work that Palantir didn’t do, which was test and trace . . . [Palantir] hasn’t let us down,” he said.
Other potential bidders could include consulting firms such as Accenture, PwC and KPMG, who have technology partners such as Oracle and Microsoft.
NHS England said the procurement process will start in early July and that it will be an open procurement to allow all suppliers a chance to bid.
Backlash:
OpenDemocracy reported that, “experts have warned that contracts with the secretive company could involve an “unprecedented” transfer of patients’ sensitive health information.”
Palantir has been awarded more than £46m in public contracts by the UK government and NHS since the start of 2020.
The British OpenDemocracy group said that, everyone should be worried about Palantir.
“At the bank JP Morgan, an investigations team worked with Palantir to find internal malpractice. Palantir’s tools inspired the team to collect as much data as possible on staff. A staffer wielding those tools lamented that: “The world changed when it became clear everyone could be targeted using Palantir… everyone’s a suspect, so we monitored everything. It was a pretty terrible feeling.”
Furthermore, OpenDemocracy said that Palantir is too powerful: “While we have been assured that all the data being fed into the datastore is anonymised, even supposedly anonymised data can become linked amongst wider data pools. This is part of what makes Palantir’s products powerful.”
Palantir is not a “data broker” or “data aggregator.”
“Palantir has often been described as a secretive company. There is some truth to this. For many years, we primarily served institutions with exceptional confidentiality expectations in fields like defence and intelligence. Palantir had little choice but to remain silent about our work, even when misunderstandings about the nature of the business appeared in the media or in the public sphere.”
Unlike many tech companies, the Palantir business model is not based on the monetisation of personal data. Palantir does not collect, store, or sell personal data. Palantir does not use personal data to train proprietary AI or machine learning models to share or resell to other customers. Palantir never facilitates the movement of data between clients, except where those specific clients have entered into an agreement with each other.
“Palantir builds digital infrastructure for data-driven operations and decision making. Our products serve as the connective tissue between an organisation’s data, its analytics capabilities, and operational execution. Palantir’s platforms tie these together by bringing the right data to the people who need it, allowing them to take data-driven decisions, conduct sophisticated analytics, and refine operations through feedback. We license this software to organisations, who receive secure and unique instances of our platforms in which to conduct their own work on their own data.”
This infrastructure helps organisations bring the right data together at the right time to answer complex questions and make intelligent decisions. This is particularly valuable when existing systems are fragmented, and essential information is held in silos that can’t communicate with each other.
Healthcare organisations, for instance, have used the Palantir software to tackle challenges like efficiently allocating PPE supplies when thousands of hospitals across the country have radically different and constantly changing levels of supply and demand for each item of PPE.
“With regards to customer data, Palantir acts as a data processor, not a data controller. Our software and services are used under direction from the organisations that license our products: these organisations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted; and any Palantir engineers that assist them in their work follow these directions.”
Palantir does not and cannot reuse or transfer our clients’ data for our own purposes.
“Attempting to profit from customer data in this way would be illegal and would undermine the trust that is necessary to work in the sensitive environments in which we have built our business, said the company”.
NHS Contract:
NHS England has announced plans to develop a £240million ‘Federated Data Platform’ (FDP) via a prior information notice ahead of an open procurement.
The release data for this contract is expected any time now. The publication of the contract notice was estimated to be announced on 6th June 2022.
The notice states that the data platform will be an “essential enabler to transformational improvements” across the NHS and will be an “ecosystem of technologies and services”.
The new data platform will be built around five major use cases, each wide-ranging in scope:
- Population health and person insight
- Care coordination (with focus on ICS)
- Elective recovery (with focus on trusts)
- Vaccines and immunisation
- Supply chain
Past Relationships With NHS:
Healthcare organisations, for instance, have used the Palantir software to tackle challenges like efficiently allocating PPE supplies when thousands of hospitals across the country have radically different and constantly changing levels of supply and demand for each item of PPE.
“With regards to customer data, Palantir acts as a data processor, not a data controller. Our software and services are used under direction from the organisations that license our products: these organisations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted; and any Palantir engineers that assist them in their work follow these directions.”
Palantir does not and cannot reuse or transfer our clients’ data for our own purposes.
“Attempting to profit from customer data in this way would be illegal and would undermine the trust that is necessary to work in the sensitive environments in which we have built our business, said the company”.
One example of Palantir, and how they can provide adaptability is via their case study with the UK NHS. Palantir & the NHS ran the fastest, and most efficient roll-out within the world. The NHS had real time accurate data, in which can reveal the inequality of uptake within vaccinations.
The NHS can see within real time, what is work and what is not working. This enabled a learning system, in which ensured that the NHS provided the world’s best vaccination rollout.
After the pandemic, Palantir begun working more closely with the NHS across the UK.
Now the NHS is working with US software firm Palantir to help reduce the backlog of patients waiting for elective care after the pandemic. Palantir’s Foundry operating system is due to be rolled out across 30 hospital trusts this month, following a recent pilot at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Trust.
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital’s digital solution, developed by Palantir, makes information such as the total number of patients waiting by clinician, theatre scheduling, staff rostering, and patient pre-med tests, available on a single platform.
A case study of Chelsea and Westminster outlined in the plan, says Palantir’s software has enabled a 28% reduction in the inpatient waiting list through validation and better clinical oversight.
It adds that booking lead times have tripled from six to 17+ days on average, meaning patients can be notified about surgery in a timelier manner and reducing the number of cancellations due to lack of staff or patient availability. Also, theatre utilisation has improved from 73% to 86%, over a three-month period.
The solution aims to help prioritise patients with the highest clinical risk who have been waiting the longest.
The NHS Is Under Serious Strain:
The fact is the problems the health and care system are facing are deep-rooted. Much is made of the impact of the pandemic, but the health service was already struggling before Covid hit.
The NHS is under serious pressure.
With winter approaching, there is serious concern within the UK about the capabilities of the NHS.
The health secretary has warned that the NHS in Scotland is facing an “exceptionally difficult winter”.
Accident and emergency waiting times are already at their worst level on record, with pressure on services expected to intensify in the coming months.
There are now calls for the Scottish Government to tackle the problems – and warnings that, without swift action, there will be unnecessary deaths.
It’s clear the health service is already under immense pressure and it has been for some time.
Recent figures for A&E waiting times show just 63.5% of patients were seen within the Scottish Government’s target of four hours.
That’s a record low – so highlights the seriousness of the situation just now.
We know that more people get ill in winter anyway, but on top of that are extra layers of pressure. That includes another possible Covid wave and the potential resurgence of flu.
Added to that, there’s a new threat this year – the effect of the cost-of-living crisis.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Scotland is warning that lives will be lost because of the waiting time delays.
Health secretary Humza Yousaf says the waiting time figures are “unacceptable” and he wants “immediate improvement”.
But he also says there’s no doubt this winter is going to be very difficult.
He’s expected to outline the Scottish Government’s winter plan in a statement to parliament in the coming weeks.
UK Government Declaration On Governmental Reform:
Within a recent article posted by the UK Government, included within was an explicit description and coverage of Palantir & the work achieved during the pandemic.
“We will put data at the heart of our decision-making, learning explicitly from the approach we have taken in responding to COVID-19. We will set a presumption in favour of openness and a requirement to share data across departments, so that policies are informed by the best data analysis from across government. We will create data inventories to ensure we know what data exists, where it is stored, and how it can be accessed.”
“We will make data visualisation a common tool to ensure Ministers and officials understand in real time the latest evidence underpinning decisions”.
This is all the latest regarding the NHS & their upcoming deal. More information will be provided as the case unfolds.
