Thread by @allthecitizens

🚨BREAKING: Private Health meets Big Data:

Babylon Health and Palantir Technologies collaborate on a data platform for digital care, with both companies also having a foothold in the Health Service, @BylineBITE and @allthecitizens can reveal. THREAD.

British private “digital-first” healthcare firm Babylon Health, which offers mobile consultations through its ‘GP at Hand’ service within the NHS, has surged in popularity during the pandemic - now with 140,000 registrations in the UK.
forbes.com/sites/daviddaw…

Babylon is reported to “manage” some 350,000 lives in 16 counties, and has signed agreements with several NHS trusts via GP at Hand, effectively integrating a private firm, offering “proactive”, AI-based healthcare with day-to-day running of GP surgeries.
digitalhealth.net/2020/05/third-…

As the firm expanded globally, it delivered over 1.3m consultations in the first half of 2021, having earlier this year listed on the New York stock exchange with a $4.2bn valuation, securing backing from investors, including data analytics giant Palantir.
ft.com/content/d41a17…

Now, Babylon and Palantir have made a further collaboration official, with Palantir integrating Foundry into the Babylon Health Graph - giving a ‘360 degree view of members' health - and giving Palantir access to Babylon’s 80bn patient data points.
babylonhealth.com/press/babylon-…

At the start of the pandemic, Palantir had, along with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Faculty, been tasked with building and operating the Covid-19 datastore within the NHS. The “unprecedented” transfer of patient data acting as a “single source of truth”.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1348978147795075074?s=20

They were subsequently awarded a 2-year, £23m contract to process NHS data, which became the subject of a legal battle, with the government eventually agreeing to “press pause”, and consult the public before further deals were struck.
opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/weve…

They were then removed from working DHSC’s Adult Social Care dashboard, reverting to a system developed by BAE Systems.

However, this new agreement may act as a way for Palantir to be able to continue processing health data without such intense scrutiny.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1436324013001908229?s=20

There are real concerns both with Palantir and Babylon being granted further access.

The CIA-backed ‘Spy tech” firm are known to have had involvement with Cambridge Analytica, and co-founder Peter Thiel is an outspoken libertarian, and former Trump donor

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1403044625384984580?s=20

Babylon too have been found to have Conservative donors among their shareholders, some of whom also donated to Matt Hancock’s 2019 leadership bid, and Hancock Himself has been a strong advocate of the company.
theguardian.com/politics/2021/…

Additionally, former Downing St chief aide and former head of Vote Leave Dominic Cummings used to work as an advisor to the group, a role that he recently tried to return to after his departure from Westminster.
businessinsider.com/cummings-babyl…

This also wouldn’t be the first time that GP data has been up for grabs under this government.

As previously reported by @BylineTimes, the GP data grab, now also paused, was set to go ahead under the radar as late as August this year:
bylinetimes.com/2021/06/02/dat…

While the collaboration is, for now, limited to the US, it’s unclear how long this will remain the case.

Palantir have expressed desires to become the “default operating system” for analytics across the US, and have won over £104m in UK public contracts:

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1438899565210611720?s=20

With NHS data being so valuable, worth over £10bn a year, and with government pushing for ‘innovation’ over regulation in the post-Brexit data-strategy, it seems the Tories have no desire to control how data is leveraged, leaving it open to potential private-sector exploitation.

Full story from @writesbright at @BylineTimes below, with additional reporting from @MC_00_ and @jwsal:

bylinetimes.com/2021/12/20/pri…