Category: Health

Why we need to worry about Palantir


Palantir making inroads into government institutions including the NHS

August 2026

Increasing concern is being expressed by the ever widening presence of Palantir into the fabric of British society. Who are they and what are the concerns? Palantir is an American company which has the technology to enable its clients to see all the data they have, all at once. Organisations often have multiple sets of data but scattered among different systems. Harvesting information in a holistic way is often beyond their capability. Palantir uses AI to integrate, analyse and make sense of fragmented data sets. Where information sits in different ‘silos’ the firm’s technology enables it to combine that data into something meaningful and useful.

Clearly it can be realised that in something like health and a massive organisation such as the health service in the UK, putting this information together has the potential to produce clinical benefits and efficiencies in the NHS’s operations. What’s not to like? It is called the Federated Data Platform (FDP).

Problems

There are many problems however:

  • Firstly it is an American company and like other US high tech firms, there is precious little control over them as they are based in the US. There is limited transparency and they have access to a wide range of sensitive personal and medical information.
  • As we have seen with recent actions with the Trump administration, the US has diminishing concerns for international norms of behaviour. Where once we viewed America as a defender of western values of human rights and the post war ‘new world order’ (however imperfectly) these have increasingly been ignored with the ‘America first’ policy. Entrusting patient data with American firms is inherently risky therefore.
  • The firm has deep ties with US agencies including ICE which is rounding up thousands of immigrants ready for deportation. More alarmingly, two years ago, Palantir signed a contract with the Israeli military to use its technology in support of ‘war related missions’. This was signed while Israel was engaged in genocidal actions in Gaza and enabled the IDF to harmonise its data more efficiently. This suggests the firm has few if any moral qualms about how its technology is used.
  • The firm – in common with other tech companies – is a profit making enterprise and indeed there are probably hundreds of companies involved in supply materials and services to the NHS. But this firm is at the heart of the system and there are real doubts about how the data will be used by them and how secure it is in their hands.

How effective are they anyway? The BMJ has questioned that data from a supposed success story at the Chelsea and Westminster Foundation Trust is flawed and that two key claims overstate the benefits of the software. The current issue of Private Eye (No: 1681) also cast doubt over its claims to have improved the level of delayed discharges. The Health Foundation think tank found ‘no noticeable improvement’ in discharge rates although Palantir disputes their findings.

The major worry is that the government is desperate to reduce the NHS bill. Their record of IT projects has been dismal with millions lost in failed or abandoned schemes. Are they more concerned with using firms like Palantir who offer to save them money than they are with the safety of patient information? How ready are they to consider human rights and patient security issues even knowing that the firm is a willing participant in genocide and the deeply unpleasant activities of ICE? How trustworthy are the firm’s claims to protect that information? Does a desire to save money override genuine concerns over rights and safety?

ADDITION: We have received the following comments from someone working in the NHS:

“Palantir’s software is clunky. Many of its tools are basic and regressive. Some of the built in apps don’t have the functionalities that NHS organisations actually need. And Palantir provides very limited support when issues need resolving.

“But it’s not just about the software. When we work with Palantir, we don’t just use their tech, we import their ideology – and Palantir’s ideology is at best deeply uncomfortable and at worst ethically bankrupt.

“Palantir was founded for surveillance and military operations. So I am being forced to use software that’s enabled the deaths of thousands of my global healthcare colleagues. This has had a devastating impact on my wellbeing. I used to love my job so much, and now it makes me sad and sick.

“That’s why I am doing all I can to get Palantir’s NHS contract cancelled, and I am proud to work with groups like Just Treatment who are fighting for this too”.

Amnesty is pointing out that it is not mandatory for local trusts to use the firm. It is up to people to contact their MP or the trust directly to oppose the use of the technology in their local hospital, in our case Salisbury District Hospital. At the very least to express their concerns. The BMA is opposed to increasing roll out of FDP.

‘Human rights abuses thrive in silence, hidden in contracts, buried beneath complex systems’ (AI).

It’s not just the NHS and Palantir is involved with the police and the Ministry of Defence. Further information.

We are grateful to Amnesty’s recent Fact File from which we have drawn material for this post.

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Another vigil and is the mood changing in the US?


Latest vigil – No 141 – is well attended

August 2026

Around 35 attended the latest vigil held in Salisbury’s market place and it is remarkable that they continue week after week. As we have said before, there is a mixture of people who come every week and those who turn up occasionally. Recognition is high and news of the terrible events in the region continue to appear on our screens and in the media.

The rising tide of settler violence achieved significant coverage last week even from the BBC which is extremely nervous of covering news from the area for familiar reasons. We noted a shift in attitudes in America in our last post and a forthright criticism by Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador, calling the settlers ‘Israeli terrorists’. This from a Zionist and Israeli apologist. What was important was not just the comment itself but that he felt able to make them.

Once again we note the absence of the Salisbury MP Mr John Glen who has never attended a vigil or ever mentioned them in his weekly column in the Salisbury Journal. 141 weeks of silence is a powerful message. He is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel along with around 140 other MPs.

Israeli support for violence and the lack of healthcare for Palestinians claimed

A distressing report in Haaretz discusses the attitude of many Israelis towards Palestinians and particularly their health care or rather lack of it. They report:

“The majority of Israel’s Jewish public supports the worsening conditions of Palestinian patients, caused by their inability to receive necessary treatments. This isn’t the finding of any pollster – no one includes in their surveys a question like, “Do you support the elimination of Palestinian public healthcare?

“Yet this conclusion is inevitable, considering the fact that Israel’s Ministry of Finance continues unimpeded to steal the Palestinian Authority’s income from taxes and customs. Those revenues are meant for medical treatments, medications, medical staff salaries and the maintenance and development of hospitals and clinics”.

The article describes the lack of condemnation by a wide range of Israeli organisations and the writer concludes:

“[…] With great pain, you have to conclude that, in the eyes of too many Jews in Israel, also the slow killing of Palestinians, simply because they are Palestinians, is a legitimate policy.”

Public opinion in Israel is important especially with elections imminent. The hard right politicians who support the destruction of Gaza, the increasing West Bank settler violence and the prevention of health care described in the article, are in the ascendant. If the article is right, it does not look as though there will be much in the way of pressure to change the political climate.

Photo: Courtesy of Peter Gloyns

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Palantir and the NHS


Human rights concerns with the use of Palantir software in the NHS

February 2024

The current issue of the Amnesty magazine (Spring 2024) poses some human rights questions concerning the use by the NHS of the American firm Palantir to create a data platform. With recent revelations surrounding Fujitsu’s Horizon program used by the Post Office and which destroyed the lives and livings of nearly a thousand sub postmasters, we should take a careful look at the firms being used to do this IT and data work. 

And looking at Palantir is not a pretty sight. Founded by the CIA, its primary interest is treating people as suspects or targets. Its software is used by both NSA and GCHQ and is designed as a surveillance tool. It is used by some police forces in the US in what is called ‘predictive policing’ which has a dubious history. It was used for workplace deportation raids also in the US as part of Donald Trump’s actions against immigrants. Another troubling use is by the Israeli military to ‘help the country’s war effort’. 

A key investor is Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal who is, paradoxically, hostile to the notion of an NHS and to government aid programmes generally. He is a funder and supporter of Donald Trump.

The Amnesty article says ‘Any company linked to serious human rights abuses should be excluded from tendering for NHS contracts on grounds of ‘professional misconduct”. Essentially, the British public needs to be reassured that information gathered by Palantir won’t be harvested by them for other purposes. 

American companies have had their eyes on the NHS for many years and have spent considerable sums trying to get contracts. It was likely to be a key issue in the UK/US trade deal negotiations post Brexit, now a lost cause. Palantir offered to assist the Covid-19 response for a fee of £1 (not one million) because it gave them an ‘in’ and the ability to build a datastore. 

As we have learned from Horizon and the Post Office, as well as other IT disasters, there are many concerns about IT firms, their actual ability to do what they claim they will do, their integrity and the security of the data they collect. Major firms like X, Facebook, WhatsApp and others have shown a cavalier attitude to online safety for the young and other vulnerable individuals. We also have British politicians and ministers openly hostile to human rights issues and some would like to see the Human Rights Act abolished. This is a toxic mix. We will have the usual platitudes and reassurances about ‘online safety is our number one concern’ and other bromides, the reality being that it is way down their lists of priorities. 

The people organising these contracts, the civil servants and the various ministers, have next to no experience of placing contracts or having anything like the expertise needed to keep an eye on this as was explained in Ian Dunt’s book How Westminster Works: and Why it Doesn’t. Twenty ministers came and went during the Post Office, Horizon scandal and did – or were able to do – nothing. 

To use a firm with the history that Palantir has, with the history of blunders surrounding IT contracts and with ministerial oversight feeble or missing altogether is to court disaster and is a huge risk for the confidentiality and security of our private medical information. 

The Salisbury and South Wiltshire group is 50 this year

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