UK consortium to bid for £480 million NHS data contract
UK consortium wishes to offer the UK an alternative to US-based Palantir
A consortium of British data companies is set to compete with US-based Palantir, in the bid for a £480 million NHS contract to build the health service's federated data platform.
The Financial Times has reported that the companies, which include Voror Health Technologies, Eclipse and Black Pear, believe that they can fulfil the five-year contract for significantly less than the £480mn the government has budgeted.
The bid hasn't come out of the blue. The companies have a long standing track record in the NHS and between currently manage the data of more than 30 million people.
The opportunity to bid for the NHS federated data platform contract opened on 23rd January 2023 and closed 17 days later, and the outcome is expected to be announced in the autumn.
Privacy advocates and campaigners have expressed concerns about the prospect of Palantir extending its reach so deeply into the NHS. The US-based company won its first contract with the NHS in 2020, as its Foundry tool was deployed to help the NHS how to understand how best to allocate resources as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold. That contract was extended, and the campaign group Open Democracy issued a lawsuit to the NHS, which claimed that the contract was awarded without sufficient scrutiny. The lawsuit was eventually withdrawn but the NHS promised transparency in any future deal making.
Palantir has amassed a huge quantity of personal data globally as it has been deployed by governments, police and other authorities - most notably US immigration. Open Democracy has labelled its data analysis and visualisation tool as 'spy tech'.
The company is secretive in the extreme, and it was revealed last year by Bloomberg that Palantir had a covert strategy to buy its way into the NHS via acquisition if political resistance in the UK proved difficult to overcome.
Ethics are not the only concern of those expressing doubts about the wisdom of allowing such a controversial organisation untrammelled access to vast quantities of UK patient data. The 19-year-old company reported its first profitable quarter in February.
Members of the competing UK consortium are keen to reinvest in the UK, and in frontline NHS services. Julian Brown, Eclipse chief executive and practising healthcare professional, commented to the Financial Times:
"We know that the NHS is a very complex system, and different from other healthcare systems around the world, particularly in terms of its meticulous protection of patient data.We were keen that the NHS stays in control of the data . . . and to reinvest the revenue in frontline NHS services."