Alarm in health service over Palantir staff being given NHS email accounts

Alarm in health service over Palantir staff being given NHS email accounts Exclusive: Sources believe AI tech company’s engineers have been granted access to directory of up to 1.5m staff UK politics live – latest updates Health service staff have expressed alarm that engineers working for controversial tech company Palantir have been given NHS email accounts. Employees using NHS .net email accounts have access to a directory with the contact details of up 1.5 million staff. Sources believe Palantir staff were granted the same access. Palantir staff working on the introduction of its Federated Data Platform for NHS England have also been given access to NHS SharePoint filesharing systems and internal Microsoft Teams groups. Hospital trusts and integrated care boards across the country are being encouraged to adopt FDP, which Palantir won a £300m contract to provide in 2023. NHS England says FDP allows NHS organisations to connect patient records historically held across different systems, allowing staff to manage waiting lists, allocate appointments, speed up diagnoses and personalise treatment more effectively. It is part of the government’s plan to “reinvent the NHS” through “radical shifts”, including moving systems from “analogue to digital”. The use of NHS email accounts and internal systems by private contractors is not unusual. However, Palantir’s association with AI-powered surveillance and war technology has made some staff, patients and human rights campaigners question the ethics and implications of allowing the spy-tech company to become embedded in the UK public sector. Rory Gibson, a resident doctor, said: “I – as a doctor – absolutely don’t want my personal email and number to be accessible to someone who works for Palantir on the NHS, and might next month be working on systems for drone strikes. NHS staff have not consented to sharing their email addresses with Palantir staff.” The Guardian has seen evidence that at least six Palantir engineers suppo...