It started with a £1 contract.

In the hours after a pandemic was declared in March 2020, Palantir, the secretive American information analytics firm, was invited to 10 Downing Street together with different tech teams, together with Amazon, Google and Meta, to debate the way it might assist the British authorities reply.

Within days, Palantir’s software program was processing streams of information from throughout England’s National Health Service, with Palantir engineers embedded to assist. The firm’s companies, utilized by the C.I.A. and Western militaries for greater than a decade, had been deployed to trace emergency room capability and direct provides of scarce tools.

Palantir charged the federal government just one pound.

The deal supplied the corporate with a worthwhile toehold. Since then, Palantir, which is chaired by Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and one among President Donald J. Trump’s major 2016 donors, has parlayed the work into greater than £60 million in authorities well being contracts. Its greatest reward could also be but to come back: a seven-year contract value as much as £480 million — about $590 million — to overtake N.H.S. England’s outdated affected person information system.

But an outcry over Palantir’s fast ascent throughout the N.H.S., the beleaguered however beloved public establishment that gives free well being care throughout the nation, has been constructing for months amongst some lawmakers, docs and privateness campaigners. It might come to a head in October, when the successful bid is anticipated to be introduced.

The contract Palantir is competing for would create one of many largest repositories of well being information on this planet and make the corporate a key companion in modernizing the well being system, which has an annual finances of £160 billion. Civil society teams have raised alarms a few single personal firm dealing with a lot private information, particularly one dogged by considerations that its software program can be utilized for mass surveillance. During the Trump administration, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement company used Palantir software to assist discover undocumented immigrants.

The unease additionally displays a tradition conflict. Palantir, which has a market value of over $30 billion, has employed a lobbying playbook honed within the U.S., at instances ruffling British officers unaccustomed to its assertive strategy. It has enlisted political figures, senior well being executives and a number of consulting corporations, in line with interviews with N.H.S. officers, trade insiders and folks concerned in Palantir’s operations. In 2022, after requests for proposals had been hunted for the £480 million contract, Palantir poached N.H.S. England’s deputy director of information companies and its synthetic intelligence director.

The firm’s enlargement within the N.H.S. has coincided with a crisis at the 75-year-old health service, after years of constrained funding and staffing shortages. The criticism of Palantir is a part of a fierce debate in Britain in regards to the function of profit-seeking corporations inside a taxpayer-funded system, in addition to the dealing with of delicate affected person info. Most Britons oppose additional privatization of the well being service, polls present.

In Parliament, greater than a dozen lawmakers from throughout the political spectrum have referred to as for better transparency over the main points of the £480 million contract. David Davis, a Conservative member of Parliament, advised The New York Times he would ask England’s public spending watchdog to assessment “any contracts awarded to Palantir.”

“Palantir’s extensive lobbying efforts in the U.K. are an obvious attempt to whitewash their background at the heart of the world of espionage — with all its implications for ethical behavior and lack of transparency,” he mentioned in an announcement.

Palantir declined to touch upon its bid, however mentioned it was proud to help “the world’s most important private and public institutions.” The firm defended the standard of its work and mentioned, “We are now helping to reduce the N.H.S. backlog, cut the amount of time nurses and doctors need to spend on administrative tasks and speed up cancer diagnosis — all while rigorously protecting data privacy.”

N.H.S. England mentioned the appliance course of was “fair and transparent” and that each one corporations had been being handled equally. “Bids are evaluated against the same objective criteria that has been shared with all suppliers,” it mentioned in an announcement.

A Push for Growth

Speaking at Oxford University in January, Mr. Thiel went off script. The N.H.S. makes individuals sick and may embrace privatization, he mentioned in response to a query. The British public’s help for the service, he mentioned, was “Stockholm syndrome.”

Palantir shortly distanced itself from Mr. Thiel’s feedback, however they appeared to verify critics’ fears about welcoming the enterprise into the well being service.

Named after the seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” Palantir, based in 2003, initially marketed its know-how as a device for monitoring terrorists and criminals — together with, in line with news reports it has republished, Osama bin Laden. Its software program collects information from myriad inputs, together with web visitors and cellphone data, and may combine feeds from virtually any supply a shopper has entry to.

It is utilized by the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, whereas in Britain it has been utilized by the Ministry of Defense since at the very least 2018, in line with Tussell, an organization that tracks authorities contracts.

In 2018, Palantir employed the consulting agency Global Counsel to place it as a decent companion to the British authorities, not a shadowy American navy contractor, in line with two former senior staff on the consultancy who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they’d signed nondisclosure agreements.

Palantir obtained assist from a number of politically linked advisers.

One was Nicola Blackwood, a former well being minister centered on N.H.S. innovation, who took a part-time place at Global Counsel in April 2018. Her beforehand unreported reference to Palantir was a part of her work to supply shoppers with “political risk analysis,” in line with information she supplied to a authorities watchdog.

Ms. Blackwood returned to the well being ministry from 2019 to 2020. She has since been paid by Global Counsel to attend a lot of occasions in her function as chair of Genomics England, in line with authorities disclosures, typically showing with Palantir representatives. After being contacted by The Times in March, she pulled out of a talking engagement with Global Counsel the place she had been set to look alongside a Palantir govt, at an occasion referred to as “Rebooting the N.H.S.”

In an announcement, Ms. Blackwood’s workplace mentioned her function at Global Counsel concerned offering strategic recommendation and had been accepted by Britain’s anti-corruption watchdog. It mentioned her interplay with Palantir was restricted, that she by no means lobbied on the corporate’s behalf and that the occasion cancellation resulted from an surprising schedule change.

Two months after resigning because the chief govt of N.H.S. England in 2019, Matthew Swindells additionally joined Global Counsel, the place he suggested Palantir. He chaired the corporate’s well being advisory board even after changing into joint chair of 4 outstanding N.H.S. hospital trusts, well being service documents present. One of the trusts, Chelsea and Westminster, was the primary to participate in a authorities pilot to check Palantir’s know-how. (The belief mentioned Mr. Swindells was excluded from decision-making associated to Palantir.)

Shane Tickell, the chief govt of 1 N.H.S. contractor, Voror Health Technologies, recounted assembly with Mr. Swindells final yr. Mr. Swindells, he mentioned, instructed Voror construct software program to work with Palantir’s programs and added that the well being service might need cash obtainable if it did. “It left me feeling awkward and uncomfortable,” mentioned Mr. Tickell, who later joined a British consortium to problem Palantir for the N.H.S. contract, pledging to safeguard affected person information. (The bid was unsuccessful.) He supplied a calendar merchandise and dated notes from the assembly to corroborate his account.

Mr. Tickell mentioned he believed Palantir had an inside observe to win the massive information contract due to its work through the pandemic and its ties to the federal government.

Mr. Swindells mentioned in an announcement that he now not chaired Palantir’s well being advisory board and that his Global Counsel work had at all times been declared to the well being service. He declined to touch upon the assembly with Mr. Tickell.

A Growing Backlash

Last yr, a government-commissioned assessment warned the N.H.S. to “avoid exclusive commercial arrangements” round its information, describing a long time of affected person data as “buried treasure” that would save lives if safely shared with researchers. The writer, Prof. Ben Goldacre, famous that the information represented among the most delicate info that might be held about people, from psychological well being assessments to abortion data. Sharing it with analysts “is an extremely serious undertaking whose gravity must never be underestimated, if the N.H.S. is to maintain trust,” he wrote.

Against this delicate political backdrop, Palantir has emphasised that it could not gather or monetize N.H.S. information, however merely present the software program to research it. Simultaneously, it has tried to form the dialog across the function of personal corporations in well being care.

It employed Fleetwood Strategy, the consultancy co-founded by Isaac Levido, a political adviser to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Palantir additionally gave cash to assume tanks and trade teams, sponsoring two events on the Institute for Government that included its personal workers members as audio system, and funding a Christmas social gathering for the Cambridge Health Network, an trade physique that brings collectively N.H.S. and company executives.

Palantir joined a tech trade commerce group, TechUK, and urged its members to foyer authorities companies to undertake a “buy vs. build” coverage of buying industrial know-how reasonably than growing it internally.

Others bristled at their strategy.

At a TechUK assembly in August 2021, Palantir’s efforts had been referred to as “appallingly arrogant” by Ian Harris, the consultant of VMware, a software program firm, in line with a abstract of the assembly made by a Palantir govt and reviewed by The Times. “It’s not for industry to tell government whether it should build or buy,” Mr. Harris mentioned. (He didn’t reply to a request for remark.)

While some well being officers praised Palantir’s software program, significantly for its usefulness within the Covid vaccination program, questions have emerged over whether or not its companies are suited to the complicated wants of the N.H.S., which differ between areas and sorts of care.

Milton Keynes University Hospital Trust in Buckinghamshire was chosen final yr to check Palantir software program as a part of a pilot to alleviate a backlog of sufferers awaiting therapy. The know-how was supposed to tug information from well being data, ready lists, surgical procedure schedules and elsewhere to assist prioritize appointments.

But Palantir’s software program was not suitable with the hospital’s affected person administration system, which means employees needed to manually enter some information, in line with two hospital officers who would solely share the data on situation of anonymity. Palantir advised officers it could resolve the difficulty, however the hospital suspended the undertaking after weeks handed and not using a repair, the officers mentioned.

The know-how did work in some hospitals, with 24 trusts “realizing benefits,” a well being minister mentioned in August. At one, it helped cut back a backlog of nonemergency surgical procedures and most cancers remedies by 28 p.c. But 11 hospitals and well being trusts paused or deserted their involvement within the pilot program, the federal government mentioned in March. One mentioned the software program “did not fully meet its needs or priorities,” whereas one other determined its current system “provided current capabilities.”

Palantir mentioned in an announcement that at the very least 4 of the hospitals had since resumed utilizing the software program and that its know-how was “widely acknowledged as best in class.”

Whether the corporate secures the N.H.S. deal might not solely affect the well being service’s future, but in addition its personal.

“This is a very pivotal contract,” mentioned Rishi Jaluria, a managing director at RBC Capital Markets, who tracks the corporate. “It’s going to shape the narrative around Palantir.”