Is Palantir About To Get $260M From The NHS?
Palantir first began working with the NHS during the pandemic when they were called in to manage the distribution of vaccines. Their work landed them a 2 year, $34M contract.
Just a few weeks ago, another article came out by FT, showcasing how well Palantir has been integrating the NHS's data, saving thousands of patient's time in booking and scheduling appoints. The UK's health system is known to have massive amounts of backlogs.
The NHS recently announced a new plan "to develop a £240million ‘Federated Data Platform’ (FDP) via a prior information notice ahead of an open procurement." (via digitalhealth)
The magazine reports,
"The new data platform will be built around five major use cases, each wide-ranging in scope:
Population health and person insight
Care coordination (with focus on ICS)
Elective recovery (with focus on trusts)
Vaccines and immunisation
Supply chain
There is a suggestion that the procurement will consist of two lots – one to be for the platform itself, with the capacity for ICS integration and the relevant consultancy and communications support, and the other for privacy-enhancing technology. The market notice also says that other procurements that are relevant to the project could be made by other organisations.
NHS England says it intends to hold a supplier briefing session in relation to the project on 13 April 2022 and estimates the publication of the contract notice to be on 6 June 2022."
Why This Matters For Palantir
Palantir should be first in line to get this deal done. A federated data platform that combines a myriad of data sources into an integrated system, quite frankly, has Palantir's name all over it.
Additionally, the magazine reported that vaccines and supply chains would be integrated into this data set - Palantir was responsible for the entire NHS vaccines distribution system and has helped numerous companies with their supply chain concerns.
They also report,
Digital Health News understands that the front-runner for the FDP is widely assumed to be the existing data platform provider, Palantir, which has been working extremely closely with NHS England on provision of a national NHS data platform throughout the pandemic.
The NHS needs an integrated data system across all the hospitals and service providers they have. Since the UK has nationalized healthcare, it has led to more inefficiencies because private companies don't have as much power to immediately enact solutions to problems across doctors, patients, and hospitals.
As a result of being state controlled, the state needs to organize the vast amount of data that exists - quickly, effectively, and immediately. Palantir has an intimate relationship working with the NHS and would seem like the obvious choice.
The other core reason Palantir is likely to land this deal is because there doesn't seem to be another company that could do exactly what the NHS is looking for. Palantir has shown they can do it, landed a smaller contract off of a test pilot, and has the ability to integrate immediately with the NHS since they already have done so for vaccines.
If the NHS were to give this contract to another service provider that could offer the technology Palantir offers around data analytics, it would be interesting to see who they pick, and if the competitor is just offering a version of what Palantir does at a cheaper price.
Additionally, Palantir has confirmed they are working with the UK's government on their Ukrainian refugee crisis, only furthering the relationship between the company and the government's internal system of managing data for a variety of use cases.
Over the next few months we should have a $260M answer to this question.
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