£480m NHS data platform will replicate Palantir dashboards • The Register

The UK’s well being service has confirmed it should require winners of the procurement for a Federated Knowledge Platform (FDP) emigrate present dashboards from the present platform by US spy-tech agency Palantir.

Palantir, which made its identify creating knowledge analytics applied sciences for the CIA and US immigration agency ICE, is claimed to be making the competitors a “must-win.”

The corporate obtained a foothold within the Nationwide Well being Service (NHS) in the course of the pandemic, when it was certainly one of a variety of suppliers to construct a “knowledge retailer” to element details about the unfold of COVID-19 and its influence on the NHS, one of many world’s largest healthcare suppliers.

It received a £23 million ($28 million) contract with out competitors to increase its work on the platform, constructed on its Foundry product. The deal, which was extended without competition in January, was topic to threats of judicial evaluate, after which the NHS agreed to not lengthen it with out public session.

Additionally in January, NHS England and NHS Enchancment launched the competition for a brand new £480 million ($580 million) knowledge platform which promised to offer “the connectivity [which] will allow us to quickly scale and share revolutionary options that straight addresses the challenges most urgent for the NHS,” in line with an NHS England blog.

Potential suppliers of the brand new system have questioned whether or not Palantir has an unfair benefit within the competitors given it constructed the present dashboards and knowledge platform the NHS expects emigrate to the FDP.

In November 2022, supplier documents confirmed that present companies based mostly on the NHS implementation of Foundry have been “throughout the scope of the requirement for the Federated Knowledge Platform and can be transitioned to the FDP as a part of its implementation rather than the present platform.”

In response to a Parliamentary query late final week, Nicholas Francis Markham, member of the Home of Lords and under-secretary of state within the Division of Well being and Social Care (DHSC), confirmed present dashboards inside Foundry can be interoperable.

“Over the approaching months, an evaluation will likely be undertaken to find out which dashboards will likely be migrated to the brand new Federated Knowledge Platform and which will likely be decommissioned. The format of the specs for these dashboards will likely be developed as a part of the deliberate transition actions of the programme,” he said.

The exact that means of that assertion may be open to technical interpretation. It’s attainable the know-how in Foundry, a proprietary system, could also be interoperable with out essentially providing a stage enjoying discipline to different suppliers hoping to duplicate its dashboards.

Final week, NHS Digital, a wing of the DHSC answerable for digital technique within the well being service, lastly bit the mud. It formally merged with NHS England, finishing a move first announced by then health secretary Sajid Javid in 2021.

Merging the three our bodies answerable for tech well being technique and supply – NHS England, NHSX and NHS Digital – would create a “single organisation to guide the NHS in England to ship high-quality companies for all,” in line with NHS England.

“The transfer brings the NHS’ nationwide knowledge and know-how experience into one organisation, creating a more in-depth hyperlink between the gathering and evaluation of knowledge to assist drive enchancment to affected person outcomes,” NHS England said.

However others have expressed concern that it might result in a scarcity of authorized oversight of affected person privateness, given the particular authorized powers NHS Digital was given.

Writing within the British Medical Journal final 12 months, former NHS Digital chairman Kingsley Manning, mentioned: “Disposing of an impartial statutory physique in NHS Digital, charged with defending affected person rights, is itself, unlucky. However handing that physique and its powers to NHS England, is a grave error.”

NHS England mentioned the merged operation would “embody all present protections for knowledge” and sees “NHS England change into the custodian of nationwide well being and social care datasets and the only govt non-departmental public physique with duty for digital know-how, knowledge and well being service supply within the NHS.” ®