Palantir secures £25m NHS Federated Data Platform transition deal

Palantir secures £25m NHS Federated Data Platform transition deal dpeters@techmarketview.com (Dale Peters)

Palantir has secured a 12-month £25m contract with NHS England (NHSE) to facilitate the “transition” from the Palantir Foundry platform to the new NHS Federated Data Platform & Associate Services (FDP-AS) supplier.

The Federated Data Platform (FDP) has been described by NHSE as an essential enabler to transformational improvements across the NHS. It will replace the COVID-19 Data Store that was introduced during the pandemic but extend its functionality to a broader range of capabilities. The £480m FDP-AS contract notice was published in January (see £480m NHS Federated Data Platform tendered).

The Data Store started life as a three-month trial of Palantir’s Foundry platform, which was contracted via G-Cloud in March 2020 for a fee of just £1. Palantir went on to secure a £1.5m four-month extension to the trial in June 2020. This trial evolved into the COVID-19 Data Store, with Palantir securing a two-year contract for the provision of data management platform services (estimated to be worth up to £23.5m) in December 2020, a deal that was recently extended to June 2023 at a cost of £11.5m. To date, spend data suggests Palantir has accrued income of c.£50m for this work.

The new contract award notice states that Palantir will support the safe transition and exit from the incumbent supplier to the new FDP-AS supplier when it is awarded and established. However, Palantir has long been considered the frontrunner to win the FDP-AS contract and this new transition contract does not change that viewpoint.

Responding to new contract award the British Medical Association (BMA) said it would exacerbate concerns GPs have regarding the appropriate use of patient data. It called on NHSE and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to urgently discuss how they plan to use confidential patient data within this data platform and what role Palantir will play.

The FDP-AS programme has faced significant scrutiny related to concerns about privacy, security and transparency and will continue to do so. As TechMarketView has said previously, NHS England will need to ensure it mandates interoperability, minimises vendor lock-in and provides reassurance that patient data is going to be treated safely and appropriately if the FDP is to succeed.