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TEXXR

Chronicles

The story behind the story

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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

Leo Kelion / BBC :

BBC Leo Kelion

Context & Ripple Effects

At the height of the first COVID wave, the NHS pulled together an unusual vendor bench — Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and UK firm Faculty AI — to build a dashboard tracking virus spread against hospital capacity. What began as emergency crisis work hardened quickly: leaked documents within weeks revealed the depth of the "Covid-19 datastore" cooperation with Faculty and Palantir, and by June the government had published the underlying contracts with all four vendors.

First-order effects

  • The NHS gains real-time visibility into outbreak spread and its own treatment capacity during the peak of the pandemic, while the four vendors secure a foothold in UK health data under expedited crisis procurement.

Second-order effects

  • Palantir immediately shops the playbook abroad, entering talks with France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland about deploying its tools against COVID-19, and converts the emergency work into a bid for a £360M contract to underpin NHS operations.

Third-order effects

  • Crisis-era data sharing calcifies into permanent infrastructure: by 2023 Palantir and Accenture hold a £480M contract to overhaul the NHS patient data system, with patients unable to opt out — a structural shift of national health records toward a small set of vendors and a live privacy fight.

The trend: Emergency pandemic data partnerships are hardening into long-term national health-data infrastructure contracts, concentrating public medical records around a handful of analytics vendors.

Discussion

  • @nhsx @nhsx on x
    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/ ...
  • @tomcopsymes Maj Gen Tom C-S on x
    Amidst the tragedy there are opportunities - we must ensure we never go back to our old ‘business as usual’. We must lock in changes to how we develop and deliver new capabilities, just as @NHSuk, @NHSX and @digital4defence are doing. https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...
  • @palantirtech Palantir on x
    We're proud to provide the #Palantir platform to @NHSX to assist the @NHS in the fight against #covid19. Learn more: https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/ ...
  • @danielkorski Daniel Korski on x
    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…
  • @nmrperrin Nicola Perrin on x
    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/...
  • @jenit Jeni Tennison on x
    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/...
  • @yvesalexandre Yves-A. de Montjoye on x
    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/...
  • @rachelcoldicutt Rachel Coldicutt on x
    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/...
  • @lisafox202 Lisa Fox on x
    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…
  • @jdr_tech Jacqueline De Rojas Cbe on x
    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…
  • @benpatrickwill Ben Williamson on x
    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/ ...
  • @rowlsmanthorpe Rowland Manthorpe on x
    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/ ...
  • @paulias Pauli Aalto-Setl on x
    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/...
  • @peterkwells Peter Wells on x
    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/ ...
  • @ruskin147 Rory Cellan-Jones on x
    “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/ ...
  • @halhod @halhod on x
    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/ ...