As a key deadline approaches, activists warn it could be locked in with the deeply contentious system – possibly for good.

In November 2023, NHS England signed a £330m contract with Palantir to create a unified data system across its hospitals, GPs and clinics – with a break clause set for February 2027.

Practitioners had been calling for  modernised software for years. A system that connects disparate IT systems – locally and nationally – would save staff hours of unnecessary admin a week. 

But as next year’s deadline approaches, a movement is building to expel the controversial data analytics giant from the health service before it is too late. 

“My fear is that if we lose in 2027, then we’ve lost the NHS to Palantir systems,” says Duncan McCann, who leads the Good Law Project (GLP) campaign as part of a coalition of major NGOs.

The contract initially appeared to offer a solution to the sprawling web of NHS patient and medical data. Palantir’s software would sit on top of these networks, pulling the information into one centralised place.   

“It’s extremely helpful having streamlined access to patients’ medical data,” explains Dr Archie Bell, a senior house officer who works in a Bedford hospital. “Patients often can’t produce an accurate account of their medical history. It is particularly important when a patient is incapacitated physically or mentally. In the long run it saves us money, because we don’t have to spend time and resources hunting down records or doing repeat testing.”  

In June of last year, however, the British Medical Association (BMA) passed a formal resolution condemning the contract, calling Palantir an “unacceptable partner” for the NHS. 

So why are doctors and grassroots campaigners pushing back? In the intervening years, international scrutiny has grown over Palantir’s work with the Israeli military and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).     

“That involves bringing data from medical records into [their] databases,” says McCann of the company’s involvement with ICE. In January, 404 Media reported that Palantir was working on an app that uses Medicaid data to target people for deportation. 

Campaigners are also concerned that public trust in the NHS may decline as a result of the health system’s contract with a company supplying the Israeli Defense Ministry with AI tech for “war-related missions”.

“Their partnership with the Netanyahu regime [is] worrying,” McCann says. “They’re possibly implicated in the crimes those states are committing.” 

Palantir has denied involvement with Lavender and Gospel, two AI targeting systems that have been described as “automated kill lists” by Action on Armed Violence, an NGO that monitors global conflict.  

“We have no relationship to these programs and their use,” a spokesperson says, “but are proud to support Israeli defense and national security missions in other programs and contexts.”

Deep-seated ethical concerns around the NHS contract continue to persist. “If Palantir’s software is being used to target individuals in immigration enforcement and is being deployed in active conflict zones, then that’s completely incompatible with the values we uphold in the delivery of care,” Dr David Wrigley, deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) GP Committee, told the Guardian. 

Palantir has always maintained that it acts as a data processor without meaningful access to public health information. In May, however, the Financial Times reported that the NHS was granting Palantir contractors unlimited access to patient data. 

McCann says this underlines the opaque nature of how Palantir won the contract to begin with. “They snuck in during Covid on a pretty much free contract,” he explains. “There’s real concerns about how they then got this contract […] This shapes concerns about the whole procurement process, and indeed about Palantir’s wider spidery reach into the UK public services.”

Campaigners like McCann suggest that the 2027 deadline is the last opportunity for the NHS to cut ties with Palantir before it is too deeply enmeshed with the company. “This isn’t like most IT engagements – when you divorce from Palantir, they just rip everything out,” he says. “The NHS would basically have to rebuild.” 

A clear alternative is yet to be levelled. Nonetheless, campaigners like McCann suggest that the 2027 deadline could be the last realistic opportunity to have a choice – before the NHS becomes too deeply enmeshed with the company. 

“Given enough time, I think it will be really, really good. My fear is that if we lose in 2027, then we’ve kind of lost the NHS to Palantir systems, really. This isn’t like most IT engagements – when you divorce from Palantir, they just rip everything out […]. You could imagine them being explicitly implicated in some war crime in the future, where the international rules dictate that we have to divest from them quickly. The NHS would basically have to rebuild.”

The movement to divest from Palantir has already begun to be taken more seriously in political circles. Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley (no relation to David) has compared the current contract to an expensive subscription service – one that “gives you no software, no improvements and no intellectual property at the end of the contract”, he writes. In January, Green Party leader Zack Polanski even delivered a letter to Palantir’s London office, demanding an end to its contract. 

As the campaign gathers momentum, spurred on by seemingly continuous controversy surrounding Palantir, further political engagement seems likely. Still as the 2027 deadline looms, for campaigners like McCann engagement can’t grow fast enough. 

Featured image credit: Robert – stock.adobe.com