NHS data will be safe with Palantir, boss pledges amid £500m contract bid
NHS patients’ data will be safe with Palantir, the company’s CEO has pledged, as the firm bids for a £500m contract to provide software to the health service.
Chief executive and co-founder of the US tech giant Alex Karp told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg the firm would have no access to the information for its own purposes.
“The way our product is set up, I don’t have access to your data,” he said.
Speaking to Victoria Derbyshire, who was standing in for Kuenssberg, Karp said: “We’ve been at this for 20 years. We’re the only company of our size and scale that doesn’t buy your data, doesn’t sell your data, doesn’t transfer it to any other company. That data belongs to the government of the UK.”
His company is in the running for a contract to provide a so-called federated data platform.
The artificial intelligence (AI) software it intends to use would bring NHS patients’ data together to make it easier for healthcare organisations to work together and provide better services to patients.
Questioned on whether the data is at risk of being sold in the future should Palantir win the contract, Karp said: “By the UK government, not by me.”
And he insisted that the UK’s healthcare backlog is “not solvable without technology”.
He said: “The NHS has a huge problem with [a] backlog. Those problems are not solvable without technology.
“The benefits are, again, better care at the point of need in health care, every system in the United Kingdom works better and… your life expectancy goes up, your happiness goes up.”
Commenting ahead of the UK government’s AI safety summit next week, Karp added: “The biggest risk is that the technology develops to the point where it’s dangerous to us all.
“And that is a real risk and that’s why we need government officials to be actively looking at this, actively have a better understanding of how these things work and can be able to intervene when it looks like it’s going off the rails.”
Science and technology secretary Michelle Donelan told the BBC: “We’re not going to start selling on people’s private data, of course not, without their consent.”
And Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting insisted: “Labour is completely clear: we will not sell off NHS patient’s data. Rishi Sunak must today issue a clear statement that NHS patient data will not be sold to private companies.”
An NHS spokesperson said: “Patients can have confidence that data in the Federated Data Platform will always remain in the full control and protection of the NHS and patient data cannot be accessed by the company making the software.
“The Federated Data Platform will be used to connect existing data to help local health teams with waiting lists, manage theatre capacity and identify their staffing needs.”