How Palantir got into the NHS
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How did Palantir first secure a foothold in the UK government and NHS?
Today, how the world's scariest company cracked the NHS.
When Palantir won its contract with the NHS back in 2023, there was a fair amount of concern One of the world's biggest tech companies, mostly known for its surveillance and military software, was promising to transform the UK's health service. Palantir was awarded a £330 million contract to build a new digital platform that would seamlessly join up patient data and make the whole process of treating people easier, quicker, better. Now, it just needed to convince its customers.
This really interesting thing happens in May 24. All the top NHS data professionals and experts get kind of summoned to a conference or a meeting, if you like. They were health service people, data experts, the people who are really charged with using the federated data platform and really making it work. And that meeting doesn't take place inside the NHS or at a conference centre. It takes place inside Palantir's headquarters. That's not normal. Our sources who were at that meeting told us they'd never heard of that happening before.
Investigative journalist Lucas Armin began digging. With his colleague Peter Gagan, he was determined to find out more about this meeting.
Just to enter the building, you need to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which again was very new to a lot of the people going into that room. And what they described to us is this kind of classic Silicon Valley vista of table tennis and pool and a free bar and loads of salads and, you know, like cool tech stuff going on.
Cool tech stuff. You can picture it. But then the attendees who were standing around drinking and chatting got a summons.
They go downstairs to an auditorium, NHS bosses are on stage, and our source says they basically got slapped down. They got a dressing down for not using the FTP. So they then said, okay, well, let us show you what it can do. And Palantir kind of demoed it and said, you know, this is how amazing our software is. This is how it works. Who's got questions? And somebody stood up and said what apparently a lot were thinking, which is that this looks absolutely rubbish and that we're already doing a lot of these things. And we don't understand why we need to migrate from a system that works to one that actually looks like it's in some cases inferior.
Why did they? And was it true? From The Guardian, I'm Nosheen Iqbal, today in Focus. What did Palantir actually do for the NHS? Lucas Amin, welcome to Today in Focus.
Thanks for having me.
You're an investigative reporter for Democracy for Sale, and along with your colleague Peter Gagan, you've been taking a long, hard look at Palantir and its relationship with the NHS. You and Peter published your findings in the London Review of Books and then later in The Guardian, but where did your investigation begin?
there were kind of two key questions that we were set out to answer in this investigation. The first was, how did the world's scariest company, as it's referred to, end up in charge of all of our health data in the NHS? And how did it win a £330 million contract to kind of rewire the health service? I first started looking at Palantir in 2023 when we were doing stories around the tendering of this contract that they subsequently won. You know, we read about who they were and how they were founded. It came up very much in the kind of post 9-11 CIA world. CIA was their first client and also their funder in the beginning. And it just seemed like a fascinating journey that this company had then ended up in charge of our health data.
I mean, you talk about the CIA because Palantir did famously talk itself up as being essential to military and security services in the US. And it has big contracts with the Pentagon, with ICE, with the IDF. How did it grow its influence in the UK?
What influence and lobbying tactics did Palantir use to target the NHS?
When Palantir arrived in Britain, it was a relatively unknown company. It didn't have many connections. It didn't have much clout. This would have been kind of mid-2010s. And they win their first insignificant contract in 2015.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Palantir first secure a foothold in the UK government and NHS?
0:00–4:26
2
What influence and lobbying tactics did Palantir use to target the NHS?
4:26–7:27
3
How did COVID-19 and 'land and expand' accelerate Palantir's NHS contracts?
7:27–12:31
4
What is the Federated Data Platform (FDP) and why does the NHS value it?
12:31–17:30
5
How did NHS clinicians and trusts respond to the FDP rollout in 2024?
17:30–21:01
6
What did usage data and FOI documents reveal about FDP functionality?
21:01–25:53
7
What are the data access and privacy concerns around Palantir's NHS role?
25:53–27:53
8
Is there a realistic chance the NHS will pause or end its Palantir contract?
27:53–29:31
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