Palantir, the software company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, won a major contract in Britain on Tuesday to overhaul the country’s national health service’s technology system, allaying concerns that a company known for its military-related work in the United States would secure such a sensitive role in connection with patient data.
The National Health Service said Palantir won the seven-year contract worth 330 million pounds, or about $415 million, to build a new platform that integrates data from across the NHS into a central repository. Called the Federated Data Platform, the system is designed to facilitate the exchange of patient information and analysis of broader health trends across the healthcare system. The contract applies to the NHS in England and does not apply to Scotland or Wales.
Palantir was a contentious choice as some doctors, civil society groups and members of Parliament had expressed concerns about giving the company responsibility for building what could become one of the world’s largest repositories of health data. In addition to privacy concerns and the company’s ties to Mr. Thiel, a libertarian investor who was one of President Donald J. Trump’s biggest donors in 2016, many health officials and policymakers were angered by Palantir’s aggressive lobbying tactics that helped him win the contract. Others raised questions about the effectiveness of the technology.
Palantir won the contract in collaboration with business consulting firm Accenture; PwC; NECS; and Carnall Farrar.
NHS England said in a statement that the new platform would “bring together existing NHS data and make it easier for staff to access key information to deliver improved and timely patient care.”
Alex Karp, Palantir’s chief executive, said in a statement that the system would “help reduce waiting lists, improve patient care and reduce health disparities.”
Palantir was among the top contenders for the contract after gaining the trust of many senior government officials during the pandemic. The company played a key role in tabulating data on the spread of Covid-19 and allocating resources, as well as rolling out the country’s vaccination program. Palantir translated the work into other healthcare contracts, including a program to help reduce patient backlogs for surgeries and other care.
While the NHS is a government-run system, it is organized across different regional hospitals and trusts, creating information silos that officials now want to bring together.
The cost of building the data platform was originally quoted at £480 million. On Tuesday, the NHS said it had allocated additional funding to build data protection features and for other companies to bid to build new products on the platform in the future.
Dr. David Nicholl, a spokesman for the Doctors’ Association UK, said it was unclear whether Palantir’s technology would deliver the promised benefits. A pilot program produced mixed results.
“It is a staggering sum when the deal has not been adequately vetted and it makes it difficult to believe that this is the direction the journey is set to take when other options could and should have been considered,” said Dr. Nicholl in a statement.
Cori Crider, director of Foxglove, a legal group that has opposed Palantir’s involvement in the program, said: “If this system is not useful for frontline doctors, it risks becoming a half-dozen flop billion pounds.”
Palantir makes customizable software for businesses to make sense of large amounts of data. The tools process information from different sources and then combine it into visual representations that are easier to interpret.
The company’s business is largely focused on contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and others, but it has also expanded into healthcare in search of new growth areas.
To address privacy concerns, the NHS said the contract “expressly prohibits the use of patient data for commercial purposes”.