bentley steed

This led HMG to commission Goldacre to produce a report on the use of TREs as the permanent, principal way for medical researchers to mine NHS data (disclosure: I was interviewed for this report):

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis

This is a near-miraculous system: an ultra-effective, ultra-cost-effective, Made-in-Britain, open, transparent, privacy-preserving, rigorous way to produce medical research insights at scale, which could be perfected in the UK and then exported to the world, getting better every time a new partner signs on and helps shoulder the work of maintaining and improving the free/open source software that powers it.

OpenSAFELY was the obvious contender for NHS research. But it wasn't the only one: in the other corner was Palantir, a shady American company best known for helping cops and spies victimise people on the basis of dodgy statistics. Palantir blitzed Westminster with expensive PR and lobbying, and embarked on a strategy to "hoover up" every small NHS contractor until Palantir was the last company standing. Palantir UK boss Louis Moseley called it "Buying our way in":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the-palantir-will-see-you-now/#public-private-partnership

It worked. First, Palantir got £60m worth of no-bid contracts during the acute phase of the pandemic, and then it bootstrapped that into a £330m contract to handle all the NHS England data:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/22/palantir_wins_nhs_contract/

It was a huge win for corruption over excellence and corporate surveillance over privacy. At the same time, it was a terrible blow to UK technological sovereignty, and long-term trust in the NHS.

But that's not where it ended. Palantir continued its wildly profitable, highly public programme of collaborating with fascists – especially Trump's ICE kill/snatch-squads – further trashing its reputation around the world. It's now got so bad that the British Medical Association (BMA) – a union representing more than 200,000 UK doctors – has told its members that they should not use the Palantir products that the NHS has forced onto their practices:

https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s168/rr-2

In response, an anonymous Palantir spokesperson told The Register that Britons should trust its software because the company is also working with British police forces:

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/11/bma_palantir_nhs/

The BMA is a very powerful, militant union, and it has already run successful campaigns against Starmer's government that forced Labour to shore up its support for the NHS. The fact that there's a better, cheaper, more effective, technologically sovereign tool that HMG has already recognised only bolsters the union's case for jettisoning Palantir's products altogether.

Image: Gage Skidmore (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Thiel_(51876933345).jpg