Palantir Had Secret Plan to Crack UK’s NHS: ‘Buying Our Way In’

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-30/palantir-had-plan-to-crack-uk-health-system-buying-our-way-in

by disabled • 4 years ago

223 93 4 years ago

nieve• 4 years ago

Un-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/ghdS3

3746648• 4 years ago

Bloomberg used to be better. This is basically a non-story. The 'secret plan' was to use the nefarious mechanism of... Buying access that was for sale. All the allusions to shadyhandedness are just there to justify the existence of a story about Palantir because the author knew a story about a controversial company would propagate better even if it was devoid of anything meaningful to say.

skippyboxedhero• 4 years ago

It is the subject: NHS, Peter Thiel, CIA, Silicon Valley, privatization...the media coverage on this sort of stuff in the UK is deranged.

Palantir is just offering a "shiny dashboard", we should build your own...it is that easy, just knock up a Palantir competitor in a weekend (the NHS has decent tech units, but core NHS is like this...they hire £20k "devs", ask why they are getting hacked all the time, nothing works properly..."this tech stuff is all just rubbish"...it is like the late 90s).

The author spends an article outlining an elaborate plot then slips in that Palantir didn't actually manage to acquire anyone...and was working with the NHS years before this email was sent (and provided valuable support during Covid).

The irony is that this media coverage explains why healthcare tech is so bad in the UK (there is actually a listed company, worth £10m+...that is just a staff directory for hospitals, it is pre-MySpace tech, and tons of trusts use it...it is actually comic).

anonymousDan3• 4 years ago

So **ing what if UK healthtech isn't up to silicon valley 'standards'. As if the US healthcare system is anything to be envious of.

wuschel2• 4 years ago

I thought that Palantir is way more than a “shiny dashboard”, but that they managed to integrate data access and visualisation very well e.g. BASF is their customer for their Foundry product.

Is there a detail overview somewhere what products Palantir actually has, and what technology it uses for these products?

wanderlust123• 4 years ago

Can you link the listed company? Curious to see what they actually do

stuaxo3• 4 years ago

And the UK already has GDS, who in the main are very good at building digital services for government itself, they could join up more with.

LightG2• 4 years ago

Seriously ... take your drip-drop, Palantir normalisation and shove it up your orifice.

I would then be able recommend a decent NHS doctor who can look at that for you, free at the point of use, on my dime.

Very best,

anonymousDan3• 4 years ago

This is so disingenuous. The whole point is that in a publicly funded health system many people disagree with this access being available in the first place. The UK government tries to paint a picture whereby giving such access will allow a raft of plucky UK startups to revitalize the NHS, when in reality we are just handing over our data and taxpayer money to the likes of Palantir.

kmlx• 4 years ago

publicly funded systems routinely use privately funded solutions. there’s nothing new or special here.

that fact that people disagree means nothing and should be ignored as people disagree all the times about anything and everything.

roenxi• 4 years ago

One of the lesser-known risks of giving control of the health care system to the government is that the government will have control of the health care system.

It just isn't news that a company that specialises in getting government contracts has a plan to get a government contract. There are too many tautologies here to get interested in them. Next thing we'll discover that the politicians are running the healthcare system based on political calculations instead of medical advice!

AzzieElbab• 4 years ago

Telus(large Canadian telco) did this in Canada. Never heard a squick

MomoXenosaga• 4 years ago

Probably a controversial statement on HN but FUCK AMERICAN DISRUPTORS. I like my socialist privileges thank you very much.

LightG2• 4 years ago

Horsesh!t, greeney ... Palantir are controversial for a reason. And so I want to know everything single thing about them even tangentially touching the NHS so I know how to fight against it.

But thanks for your input.

sorokod• 4 years ago

You dismiss the rest of the story but accept that Palantir is controversial. Perhaps you could say something about how the fact that it is Palantir, should not be cause for concern for NHS and its patients.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#Controve...

gsatic• 4 years ago

There has been talk of an EU version of Palantir for a while now. Anyone know what the latest news is? Technically it doesnt look like there is anything too complex about what Foundary does.

enviclash• 4 years ago

Indeed the tasks described in the article were not tough nuts, which is surprising.

sva_• 4 years ago

In Germany, the latest news is that it'll cost significantly more than they initially claimed (14 mil -> 40 mil)

https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/nrw-polizei-da...

dewey• 4 years ago

Who would've expected that!

badrabbit2• 4 years ago

Do people know you can do wjat palantir does with Splunk?

jonnybgood2• 4 years ago

A lot of people don’t know what Palantir does. Only what they’ve heard.

frozencell• 4 years ago

How to discover services like this, the Internet is so big..

wuschel2• 4 years ago

What do you mean by EU-Version? A EU spin-off, or competitor?

iLoveOncall• 4 years ago

Palantir is a contracting company. What do you mean by an "EU version of Palantir"? It doesn't make sense.

gberger• 4 years ago

Helsing https://helsing.ai/ is gearing up to be the Palantir of Europe - at least in the military AI field. One of its cofounders was a software architect at Palantir.

whalesalad• 4 years ago

This is a pretty common practice in all sorts of industries. If you can’t compete somewhere, you buy someone who is already competing.

collegeburner2• 4 years ago

oh no, strategic m&a to enter a new market, getting a customer base and acquihiring a team with local experience? that's evil!

i have lots of issues with palantir's applications spying on law abiding citizens and expanding government power but, uhh, this aint it chief.

jonnybgood2• 4 years ago

Note that Palantir doesn’t spy on anything. It’s a shiny dashboard placed on top of an organization’s database. That’s all it is. Palantir does not provide data. It is the customer’s data.

stuaxo3• 4 years ago

They are ethically dubious as it the man behind it, why on earth would you give them access to a countries worth of public health data.

mhoad2• 4 years ago

Note that you are incredibly wrong https://scholarshare.temple.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.1261...

anonymousDan3• 4 years ago

I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. The NHS is supposed to be a public service, but to undermine public support for it the UK government have been slowly trying to hack off bits of it to give to the private sector and strategically underfunding it. If they could get away with it they would probably sell the NHS down the river to US healthtech in order to get a US trade deal. So people are rightly sensitive to anything that appears to point to large private sector companies gaining an increased foothold in the NHS

timellis-smith• 4 years ago

Do you have any evidence for this or are you just sprouting tired old anti-government rhetoric.

Overall, there is no evidence of a significant increase in spending on private providers or widespread privatisation of services in recent years. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/big-elect...

paganel2• 4 years ago

that's evil!

Not a Brit, so not directly involved, but, yes, letting private enterprise sneaking their way in into a government-run health system is the beginning of pure evil.

missedthecue2• 4 years ago

It doesn't sound like they're sneaking their way in. It sounds like they are acquiring private enterprises that already deal with the NHS, therefore getting exposure to that market. The private enterprise relationship with the NHS already exists before Palantir acquired it.

The NHS isn't completely vertically integrated. They buy their gowns, needles, rubber gloves, thermometers, and bedsheets from for-profit companies too. Is that "pure evil"?

collegeburner2• 4 years ago

how is publicly acquiring a company, then entering a competitive bid priced against competition, "sneaking in"? nobody's sneaking here.

atoav• 4 years ago

There are not few companies that do more damage to the societies on earth than they do good. Palantir must be easily in one of the top places of the worst offenders.

A_D_E_P_T• 4 years ago

Their products are fairly mundane and seem ethically neutral in themselves, so why do you suppose this is?

There are probably thousands of companies that do more damage to society than Palantir. For e.g., every company associated with an unhealthy vice, like alcohol, tobacco, opioids, and especially gambling.

missedthecue2• 4 years ago

What does Palantir do? What do customers pay them for?

fooker• 4 years ago

Dashboards. That’s it.

hsjdhdhskdh• 4 years ago

A.I. in general, when tied to police making is, which is the main offering of palantir (count their press releases that mention it) is a way to justify ends.

want to continue to subjulgate a minority?

pre 70s: racial laws

70s: science says this totaly not racially inclined test will select the best humans for a job.

80s: red zoning and other purely financial reasons

...

A.I.: the "data" says so.

with AI, just like the other methods, you can justify anything. juicy contracts to your brother in law firm? the data says so. a tank for your police dept? the data says so.

That is what palantir sells. insidious justification, disguised as a dashboard.

w0mbat• 4 years ago

One employee suggests doing X in an email is not the same as “company has secret plan to do X”.

finikytou• 4 years ago

do airbus and palantir now bloomberg

funstuff007• 4 years ago

There's much to not like about Palantir. I'm particularly averse to the extreme puffery regarding their tech's abilities, but buying your way into a market is far from nefarious.

mhh__• 4 years ago

NHS should be aggressively acquiring data science talent.

Unfortunately current gov doesn't give a shit about anything other than next week (science funding being cut to boost growth somehow)

Palantir Had Secret Plan to Crack UK’s NHS: ‘Buying Our Way In’

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