Unified Patient Data Platform For British Healthcare

Uploaded on 2023-12-07 in FREE TO VIEW, BUSINESS-Services-Health & Welfare

The NHS has for a while been in serious need of improved ways to share information between its many care organisations. The inability of its many existing data systems to talk to each other leads to delays in care, poor understanding of local health service needs and hide inequalities in who gets care.

And now the NHS has signed a £330 million deal with with the American company Palantir Technologies and four partners.

For over seven years, the businesses are contracted to build what is known as a Federated Data Platform (FDP), through which England’s 42 integrated care systems and 215 health trusts, but not community healthcare organisations and social care providers, will be able to share patient data in order to administer care and promote public health.

But out of 36 trusts, the Health Service Journal reported that only eight cited any specific benefit from the pilot, while at least seven refused to join or pulled out.

Palantir’s origins lie in US military intelligence, making it a controversial partner. Its founder, Peter Thiel, backed Donald Trump in 2016, and the non-profit group Foxglove has launched a campaign and is threatening legal action to block a deal for which it claims the public’s consent has not been sought. With details of the contract not yet public, it is also unclear how the NHS will extricate itself should it decide against renewing the contract. Confusion, meanwhile, surrounds the issue of if and how patients can opt out, a point about which NHS England has changed its mind twice.

Medical research is not among the FDP’s uses and pharmaceutical companies will not have access. But public confidence was damaged by previous IT failures, and issues around privacy and trust are acknowledged by leading figures, including the NHS Confederation’s chief executive, Matthew Taylor, who support data-sharing in principle. Critics claim that these should have been examined by a public consultation and discussed in parliament.

Efficiency and innovation have long been the stated objective of increasing the role of commercial sector in British public services. Promises to cut waiting lists and increase productivity are hard to resist, but data-sharing is not neccesarily a miracle cure for all these problems.

However, Palantir's new platform will deliver benefits. But there are concerns among commentators that lack of transparency over the conclusion of a major healthcare investment whose rationale has not been properly explain risks reducing public trust.

Health Service Journal: Guardian: Conversation: Register: Open Democracy: Good Law Project:

Telegraph: Image: Rose Buttler

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