Public Sector
Experts welcome contract review after claims NHS England missed chance to grow UK health tech market
Experts have welcomed the UK government's decision to review its contract with Palantir to provide software central to tackling the elective care backlog. The US spy-tech biz has, for some, been a controversial presence at the heart of the National Health Service in England since it was awarded a contract for just £1 to help provide data tools during the pandemic. It later won £60 million in uncontested deals. After the pandemic, it won a £330 million award – with other companies as partners – to provide the Federated Data Platform (FDP) under a SaaS model for the former Conservative government. NHS England defended the decision to award the FDP contract to Palantir after a competitive tender, saying it would help provide increased productivity necessary to help the NHS recover from its mammoth post-pandemic elective care backlog.
Since Labour took office, however, the Palantir deal has looked less comfortable. The company was founded with backing from CIA-linked venture capital firm In-Q-Tel and provides technology to ICE and other controversial US security agencies.
Attention has begun to focus on a contractual break clause next February, with the UK government saying it is planning to review the contract. Lord Paul Drayson, a member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, welcomed the decision to review the contract. Speaking at the Digital and AI Sovereignty event organized by open source advocates OpenUK last week, he claimed the decision to appoint Palantir to the NHS England deal did not meet the standards of clear rules and fair deals. "The issues relating to values really go to the heart of it. It's great there's being a review. The UK has the technology to do federated data platforms, and it's an example of the shift in the politics that's taking place," said Drayson, founder and former CEO of UK clinical AI and digital healthcare company Arcturis Data. Palantir said the results of its technology in the NHS were already evident as 110,078 additional patients have undergone procedures in hospital theatres since the FDP product was implemented. Nearly 7 percent more patients with referrals for suspected cancer were now receiving answers within 28 days compared to the 12 months before FDP, it said. However, experts at the OpenUK event expressed concern that the decision to give Palantir the FDP deal reflected poor decisions in shaping the UK tech market and poor stewardship of NHS data as a UK asset.Mike Bracken, partner at consultancy Public Digital and former Cabinet Office executive director for digital, said NHS England had a 15-year history of failing to set a standard health data taxonomy and classification in order to develop a thriving supply market. "That was the complete failure of NHSE," Bracken said. "We've heard talk about market shaping. Where we are now is a 15-year failure to shape a market around common standards and platforms. It really is not difficult. We're in a current position where the absence of doing that allows any single entity or company to own that taxonomy and that federated model that is not healthy for this country."
