\u201cIt’s exactly the use case that you don’t outsource, and you certainly don’t outsource outside the country,\u201d Laura Gilbert, senior director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute, a think tank founded by the former prime minister, tells WIRED. \u201cWe should be learning from that data and building a better health service, not allowing an offshore company to learn and build better products they can sell to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ayub Bhayat, the director of data and analytics at the NHS, tells WIRED that the federated data platform is helping patients \u201cwhile saving money for NHS teams and taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no requirement for its use,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Stephen Childs, the UK head of health partnerships at Palantir, says the software is \u201chelping to deliver better patient care\u2014including 110,000 additional operations, a 15 per cent reduction in discharge delays, almost 800,000 patients removed from waiting lists and a 6.8 per cent increase in the number of patients finding out whether they have cancer within 28 days of referral.\u201d<\/p>\n
In early June, members of Parliament published a report warning<\/a> that the UK\u2019s growing dependence on Palantir represents \u201can unacceptable point of weakness.\u201d The company is on track to become highly entangled in the public sector, the parliamentary committee argued, giving it immense leverage over the British state. The report also described a \u201cclear mismatch with UK values.\u201d<\/p>\n After the report was published, the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said<\/a> that the government is conducting a review of \u201cevery single aspect\u201d of the NHS contract with Palantir before deciding whether to carry the deal forward.<\/p>\n