Beyond the NHS Contract; Europe is Next.
The Federated Data Platform was a test. Its approval paves the way for Palantir to seduce the old continent and fix its complex array of healthcare systems.
I’ve said it multiple times before, Healthcare is the #1 industry in terms of Foundry users. Dozens of companies are relying on Foundry to manage an amount of data that is only growing and becoming increasingly complex, making it harder to digest.
Not having the tools to properly read this kind of data would be a mistake, but when talking about healthcare and specifically public welfare systems, this is a grave irresponsibility. We’ve seen this unfold in the United Kingdom for the last 2 years, approximately, regarding the NHS Federated Data Platform, and we’ve been witnesses of the clear benefits that Foundry delivered through pilots they were using before signing the final contract.
I perfectly remember the last days of summer of last year when we were supposed to get the official announcement, only for the deal to be postponed again and again, for more than a year. If the data, which has no ideological bias or political preference, clearly shows a reduction in waiting times for cancer patients and an improvement in theater utilization efficiency, why was the deal not signed before?
Because there’s only one possibility explanation, and that is public backlash. When you have multiple NGOs claiming the solution you’re going to adopt is malicious and has access to the data of millions of your citizens, you absolutely need to look into it. If those allegations were true, of course the UK government would have to look into other options, but there needs to be accountability and responsibility for both.
When you are lying, causing harm to patients waiting for an operation or delaying a simple visit to the doctor, there needs to be a response. Someone has to pay for more than a year of an unjustified campaign of lies.
Luckily, this battle is over and we’ve won. But, what now? We need to think long term. If Palantir is capable of securing a healthcare deal while facing the powerful evil that they’ve faced (and winning!), they can aim for the whole of Western Europe.
Spain, not long ago regarded as a country with one of the best healthcare systems in the world, is having a record high number of people waiting for an operation.
Of course, there are multiple realities throughout the different systems in Europe, but I’m Spanish and I have some idea of how our healthcare system operates. In Spain, each Autonomous Region has its own healthcare system, operated by every individual regional government. This may seem complex, but it could also mean a perfect scenario for Palantir to develop a pilot for a regional system, using a half dozen of hospitals of the same area to share a harmonized platform, just like they did in the United Kingdom.
If the pilot were to be successful, it could be extrapolated to the entire regional healthcare system and, after more successful results, every region could have their own Foundry platform, tailored for every system and their individual needs.
This is just an example of how Palantir could expand in Europe and completely disrupt an industry that cries for help. Some European countries, like Spain, have a mixed system, combining public health institutions with private hospitals. This creates the need for a correct symbiosis between these entities, with patients and the rest of citizens standing as clear beneficiaries. Not only because of better efficiency for operations and waiting times, but because taxpayers will spend less when compared to current solutions. Less waste, more results.
One of the biggest hospitals in Barcelona, the Hospital Clínic, suffered not one, but two hacks, with more than 4 terabytes of data leaked and the hackers asking for $4.5m. The regional government decided not to pay the ransom and those terabytes of data have been published online. This is what happens when you don’t have a proper infrastructure in such a vital part of public life and everyone’s health history is put at risk. Palantir can prevent these situations from happening again, even if Foxglove tells you otherwise. Using Palantir isn’t only a good idea, it’s becoming a necessity.
The mystique surrounding Palantir is something that the retail investor community understands and values quite a lot, because it adds to the whole epic aspect of being a company “no one understands” and yet, everyone talks about them. “No one knows what they do” but their clients and partners are so satisfied with the results from using Foundry that they become unpaid salespeople.
The reality is that Palantir is well known in the US and now in the UK, but people don’t necessarily associate them with the good they bring to their users and beneficiaries. Even if they have lost the NHS battle, those NGOs we were talking about before have successfully persuaded a large part of the youth into believing Palantir are the bad guys. It’s a world where facts are being replaced by feelings, and more people are mistaking feelings with the truth. If they feel Palantir are bad, they will only think of them as bad. Who cares why.
First impressions are essential to how you understand something. Palantir will inevitably join the European conversation, at some point, and they could step into it by publicly announcing their good and their work in other countries. “Palantir is saving the British health system from collapsing” would be an appropriate campaign. Not only to persuade politicians, but to make people associate Palantir with a good impact on people’s lives. To create the first memory of Palantir and plant a positive image in their heads.
I was mentioning how Palantir is already known in the US and in the UK, but they are nonexistent in the minds of virtually everyone in the rest of Europe. None of my friends or family knew what Palantir was before I told them, and I’ve literally never heard the word “Palantir” spoken by anyone prior to me telling them. It’s a big opportunity they have in Spain and other markets. They can get ahead of the bad press and of all the organizations that will inevitably pop up.
Palantir successfully produced a Proof of Concept for the Spanish Ministry of Defense in December ‘22 and they signed a proper contract for Gotham only months after. Virtually no one complained or came out against Palantir. Why? Because no one told them to do so. Sooner or later, puppet NGOs will be created and they’ll even convince members of Parliament to vehemently protest against Gotham, and the youth will take to the streets and chant against Donald Trump donor funded CIA company, for sure.
The objective of this article is only to manifest that there are ways to prevent months or even years of delays before Foundry literally helps in saving thousands of lives not only in Spain, but hopefully, someday soon, in other Western healthcare systems. Get aggressive, step ahead of the rest. Your victory is everyone else’s.