THE NEW YORK TIMES: Palantir, the analytics company led by Peter Thiel, has courted N.H.S. England with pandemic help and assertive lobbying. Its big reward may be yet to come.
It began with a £1 contract.
In the hours after a pandemic was declared in March 2020, Palantir, the secretive American data analytics company, was invited to 10 Downing Street along with other tech groups, including Amazon, Google and Meta, to discuss how it could help the British government respond.
Within days, Palantir’s software was processing streams of data from across England’s National Health Service, with Palantir engineers embedded to help. The company’s services, used by the C.I.A. and Western militaries for more than a decade, were deployed to track emergency room capacity and direct supplies of scarce equipment.
Palantir charged the government just one pound.
The deal provided the company with a valuable toehold. Since then, Palantir, which is chaired by Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and one of President Donald J. Trump’s major 2016 donors, has parlayed the work into more than £60 million in government health contracts. Its biggest reward may be yet to come: a seven-year contract worth up to £480 million — about $590 million — to overhaul N.H.S. England’s outdated patient data system.
But an outcry over Palantir’s rapid ascent within the N.H.S., the beleaguered but beloved public institution that provides free health care across the country, has been building for months among some lawmakers, doctors and privacy campaigners. It could come to a head in October, when the winning bid is expected to be announced. » | Euan Ward and Adam Satariano | Euan Ward and Adam Satariano, reporting from London, spoke to health service officials, Palantir employees and industry insiders, as well as reviewing email correspondence and notes from internal meetings. | Friday, September 29, 2023
It would appear that the privatisation of our beloved National Health Service is to be kicked up a few notches. – © Mark Alexander
