Chair of NHS trust who advised Palantir to step down

The chair of the NHS trust which runs St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington is to step down from his role after it was revealed he was privately urging his colleagues to add more patients data to a computer system designed by Palantir, a company he was also working for as an adviser.

Matthew Swindells who is chair of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and three other trusts in North West London, will step down at the end of this month.

The FT had reported in early March that Swindells had since his appointment in 2022 also acted as an adviser to Palantir through the lobbying organisation Global Counsel, co-founded by Peter Mandelson.

Only some of patients data was supposed to be logged into the Federated Data Platform (FDP) created by Palantir, and Swindells was not supposed to have any decision-making role in the operation of the computer system.

However, the FT discovered that Swindells had instructed senior NHS executives to add patient data from GPs in North West London to the FDP — despite NHS England stating that such information should not be combined.

NHS England has a contract with Palantir but has strict rules on what patient information can be collected and combined, to protect patient privacy.

Palantir is controversial as it also does work in security, defence and intelligence sectors. Staff and patients groups have questioned its suitability for handling patients data.

Financial Times: “Senior NHS manager who advised Palantir to step down from role.”

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