NHS campaigners protest outside Whittington Hospital

NHS campaigners have confronted board members about potential plans to invite an American AI giant into the Whittington, in the latest effort to bar Palantir Technologies from ever being given a contract by the hospital.

The Whittington has previously said that it has no current plans to use the data platform, and does not have to make a decision until 2027, but there are fears that they will then be beholden to government orders to sign a deal with the US company.

Duncan McCann, from the Good Law Project, said: “We have seen other hospitals refuse, and the more there is a collective no, the more there is an opportunity to find alternatives collectively, and push back against this. It is a tough decision to go against the direction of NHS England”.

The government is engaged in contracts worth over £500million with Palantir, including £330m worth of data services for the health service. Human rights groups and campaigners say the tools have been used for surveillance by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in deportation raids as well as in military technology in Israel.

Thousands of people are now opposing allowing the tech firm access to patient files, as Mr McCann described Palantir as a “reckless company” which was “almost a caricature of what you imagine an evil corporation to be”. He said it was this image, combined with a deep care for the NHS, which had brought people together for the campaign.

“They [the people who run Palantir] do not believe in a provision of healthcare in the public, free at point of use, and there’s a real question of whether we should be giving them a huge amount of public money and then this really prime position within what is our crown jewel,” Mr McCann told the board.

In relation to founder Peter Thiel’s past comments about the NHS, a Palantir spokesperson said: “Peter Thiel made those comments as a private individual and our CEO has made it clear he firmly disagrees with them and that he wishes ‘we had a health care system in the US that served the poor and underserved as well as I perceive the British system does’.”