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The U.K.’s National Health Service will start working with Palantir, the tech company cofounded by PayPal’s Peter Thiel, on a data overhaul following a deal worth up to £330 million (about $413 million).
While that could mean a massive revamp for the U.K.’s publicly funded health care system, it’s sparked concerns about giving Palantir a pivotal role in the NHS.
The contract, awarded to a group led by Palantir, including Accenture, PwC, and others, will involve investments over seven years to build a data platform for NHS England that helps hospitals analyze data, identify trends, and allocate resources within the health system, according to the NHS. This could slash wait times for patients while making the diagnosis process quicker as well.
“Better use of data is essential for the NHS to tackle waiting times, join up patient care, and make the health service sustainable for the future,” NHS national director for transformation Dr. Vin Diwakar said in a statement Tuesday. “This new tool provides a safe and secure environment to bring together data.”
What are the concerns about?
Data privacy is among the concerns flagged by critics who’ve questioned how safe the data will be in the hands of Palantir, which counts governments and intelligence agencies among its clients. People are worried that the data analytics firm can’t be trusted as it might use the information “to spy on innocent citizens.” Doctors and members of Parliament have also pointed out that Palantir could be behind one of the largest health data repositories in the world, according to the New York Times.
“It’s a staggering sum of money when there’s been insufficient scrutiny of the deal, and it beggars belief that this is the direction of travel, when other options could and should have been looked at,” Dr. David Nicholl, a spokesperson for the Doctors’ Association U.K., told the New York Times.
Britain-based independent nonprofit Foxglove has also opposed the Palantir deal for the risks it poses to sensitive medical data.
“This is a turning point for the NHS. It’s about your right to control who sees your health record and how this country should handle one of the most precious public assets our NHS has—our collected health data,” the group said in a statement.
Blast from the past
Palantir has also had its fair share of controversies surrounding its links to former President Donald Trump. Billionaire Thiel was among the prominent backers of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, donating $1.25 million, and also served on the former president’s transition committee at the time. Palantir’s partnership with America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement is also believed to have helped Trump’s crackdown on immigration.