Spy co. Palantir wins £330M (US$417M) NHS contract; raises fears
Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel, is a company known for working with intelligence agencies and military organizations around the world. Now they and four partners, including Accenture, have won an NHS England £330M contract to build a massive data platform for health data sharing. The platform will allow individual and regional health service trusts to share data to increase efficiency and purportedly to improve care. Why worry? Well, it’s early, but tech, medical and civil liberties groups are concerned patients’ data could be mishandled, and it’s not clear if patients will be allowed controls, including to opt out of having their data shared.