UK's NHS says it is working with Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and Faculty AI on a dashboard that shows the spread of the virus and NHS' ability to deal with it
The NHS has confirmed it is teaming up with leading tech firms to ensure critical medical equipment is available to the facilities …
BBCLeo Kelion
Context & Ripple Effects
At the height of the first COVID wave, the NHS pulled four very different firms — Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and London-based Faculty AI — into an emergency dashboard tracking virus spread against hospital capacity. What was framed as a crisis tool quickly deepened: within weeks, [[a:952548|leaked documents showed the scope of the Faculty and Palantir cooperation on a 'Covid-19 datastore']] behind the dashboard, and by June the government had published the underlying NHS contracts.
The significance is that this was not a one-off. The same vendor set — Palantir above all — moved from free pandemic support into paid, permanent roles in UK health data, culminating years later in a £480M Palantir-Accenture overhaul of the patient data system.
First-order effects
NHS planners gain near-real-time visibility of virus spread versus equipment and bed capacity, aimed at routing ventilators and staff to the facilities that need them.
Palantir, Faculty, Microsoft, and Google each secure a working foothold inside UK health data infrastructure at zero or nominal cost.
Second-order effects
Palantir immediately uses the NHS deal as a reference sale, entering talks with France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland about deploying its tools against COVID-19.
The opacity of the arrangement forces disclosure under pressure — leaked documents and eventually published contracts put data-governance questions about who can access NHS records at the center of the story.
Third-order effects
Emergency pandemic procurement hardens into permanent structure: the free crisis dashboard becomes the on-ramp to multi-hundred-million-pound contracts, including a patient-data system patients cannot opt out of sharing with.
A template emerges for 'state-compatible' AI vendors — small labs like Faculty and surveillance-adjacent firms like Palantir embedding in national health systems during crises, then converting access into durable government business.
The trend: Crisis-era tech partnerships in public health are hardening from temporary dashboards into permanent, contracted government data infrastructure, with Palantir as the clearest beneficiary.
Find out how NHS England and Improvement and NHSX are working to stay ahead of COVID-19 by using real time information to forecast demand on health and care services #COVID19 https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...
The work done by @NHSX and its partners is very impressive and from what I've seen via the HealthTech Advisory Board with concern both for getting data in the hands of decision-makers fast but also for ensuring privacy and confidentiality inc applying GDPR principles. https://twi…
Great to see this step towards transparency (more of this please!) and looking forward to finding out more about the governance and accountability measures being put in place for this “single source of truth” for NHS data. https://twitter.com/...
Good to read about the central coordinated approach. Those working health&care analytics need to acknowledge and reflect on the part they are playing. The pressure of getting it right may feel overwhelming for some. Thank you for doing what you do. 💙 #datasaveslives https://twitt…
The power of data in a pandemic: By consolidating data from the NHS & partners will give visibility of metrics such as: occupancy levels at hospitals, capacity of A&E & waiting times plus statistics about Covid-19 patients @NHSX #datamatters #tech https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk…
Big tech is now a huge part of coronavirus politics, doing data dashboards for health decision-making and also education without schools. Public services may never be the same again, with Google, Microsoft & Palantir expanding their activity. https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...
There's never been a more powerful example of how #DataSavesLives #COVID19 Thank you @NHSX @IndraJoshi10 @matthewsgould for the transparency and the work https://twitter.com/...
Oh look - the NHS has confirmed my reporting from Thursday It's also given an update on timelines: apparently a beta of the first dashboard “will be ready to share with key government decision-makers this week” https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...
Fantastic to see @NHSX being open about how they are bringing together data and working with the private sector to help inform the UK's response to Covid-19. Thank you @matthewsgould @IndraJoshi10! https://twitter.com/...
These aren't normal times but calling this data anonymous is just misleading: “The controls include removing identifiers such as name and address and replacing these with a pseudonym.” This is the literal definition of pseudonymous data art. 4(5) GDPR. 1/2 https://twitter.com/...
Countries are learning how to make use of that panopticon's power in a pell-mell, piecemeal way. The systems that they lash together may last a long time. It would be best to keep an eye on them. Creating the coronopticon - | Briefing | The Economist https://www.economist.com/...
Following last week's press reports NHS have published some info on how they are working with Microsoft, Palantir, FacultyAI, & Google to build a data store & dashboards to help make decisions about Coronavirus https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...
“The power of data in a pandemic - Technology in the NHS” -NHS outlines work with private sector to marshal the vital data to fight the #Coronavirus https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...
The NHS (X/England/Improvement) has put out a blog post about how it is using data to help tackle covid. it's worth reading https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...