NHS data specialists oppose Palantir’s bid for £480mn contract

NHS data specialists have warned against the rollout of Palantir’s software across the organisation, as the US tech company vies for a £480mn contract to build the UK health service’s operating system.

Palantir, led by chief executive Alex Karp and co-founded by Peter Thiel, the tech investor and prominent backer of Donald Trump, became the NHS’s go-to data analytics provider during the pandemic. Its Foundry software was used to manage the provision of ventilators, as well as the national vaccination programme.

Several data specialists familiar with its software, including three at the NHS, told the Financial Times they were concerned that Palantir had become the frontrunner to win the British health service’s lucrative “federated data platform” contract due to be awarded later this year.

These people argued Foundry was not “user friendly”, came at an exorbitant cost and had a design that made it difficult for the NHS to switch to a different provider in the future.

“Senior leadership love it because it produces nice, shiny dashboards but as an analyst, it doesn’t allow you to do the kind of data manipulation that is the building blocks of your analytical skills,” said one NHS analyst who had used the tech.

Another specialist said the prospect of paying Palantir up to £480mn for seven years has “almost an element of ridiculousness to it”.

Foundry lets users connect disparate blocks of information in one operating platform. Several specialists praised Foundry’s visualisation tools, while one said a wider rollout of the software could quickly “make a huge difference” to clinicians’ and analysts’ work by pulling vast sources of NHS data — from operating theatre schedules to staff rosters — into “an easy-to-use format”.

According to NHS England, it helped reduce inpatient waiting lists by 28 per cent in a pilot at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, with Jeffrey Ahmed, a consultant gynaecologist at the hospital telling the FT it was “a game-changer” that “reduced my administrative burden”.

Managers had pushed for broader use of Palantir’s software, data specialists said. But two of these people argued the tech was difficult to integrate with other analytical tools.

Three NHS specialists said the service should instead adopt an entirely open-source system, where source code can be easily modified, shared and exported.

NHS guidelines state that services should be built using open, reusable code whenever possible. “Publishing source code under an open licence means that you’re less likely to get locked in to working with a single supplier,” the NHS’s service standard states.

Two people referred to OpenSAFELY, the software platform designed by Oxford university academic Ben Goldacre and used to analyse the impact of Covid-19 infection on patients, as an alternative that was secure and open source.

Foundry’s source code is not open but Palantir said that it “uses open-source formats by default for all data, code and configuration”, which can be exported and downloaded to migrate to other providers.

Last year, the NHS split its contract into four parts, preventing one provider from handling all aspects of the operating system. But the right to run the platform — worth up to £480mn — remains the most valuable prize.

There are further signs of internal opposition. NHS England launched a £50,000 procurement process in November for a “staff engagement project” to encourage Foundry’s uptake among staff who manage drugs.

“Only a small proportion of the [circa] 800 team members have used [Foundry], and there is some resistance to new ways of data usage,” the procurement documents state.

In an email seen by the Financial Times, Ming Tang, NHS England’s chief data and analytics officer, told data specialists in February that the organisation’s board preferred to “‘buy-in’ commercial off-the-shelf products and configure these, rather than build everything from scratch”, as a means of managing resources efficiently.

As many off-the-shelf products use proprietary technology that are not open source, Tang’s comments sparked unease, two people said. “She didn’t seem to understand the concerns about rowing back from open source”, said one data specialist. “It seems a completely backward step”.

Cori Crider, a director at tech justice group Foxglove, called the approach “short-sighted”. “It will put the NHS in hock to US tech giants and wasteful consultancies, potentially for years,” she added.

NHS England said it had not yet selected a software provider for the £480mn contract but that they “will adhere to Open Standards principles”.

Palantir said: “Our software has been proven to help the NHS deliver better care.”

Additional reporting by Madhumita Murgia