Dropping vs. Expanding
In New York, the hospital system ended the collaboration under pressure, with objections centered on handing patient data to a company that got its start in government surveillance, insufficient contract transparency, and eroding community trust. Across the Atlantic, Palantir won and continues to operate the contract for the UK NHS's large data platform—protests exist there too, and the contract proceeds anyway. The same company, the same business, opposite outcomes—the difference isn't in the technical assessment, but in the different political structures and the leverage of public opinion.
The Real Problem With Healthcare Data Platforms
Setting aside the labeling arguments about Palantir, the core problem of contracts like this is structural: health systems genuinely need modern data infrastructure, and their in-house capabilities are genuinely lacking, so they can only choose among the few large contractors capable of taking it on—and once chosen, it's a decade-scale lock-in, with the fate of patient data bound accordingly. The checklist worth pressing is always the same: are data ownership and access boundaries nailed down? Are the exit clauses realistic? Who does the auditing? These questions determine the outcome more than "is Palantir good or bad," and they apply to every public institution outsourcing data to an AI company.
via: Hacker News